Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete ed. by Bernard McGinn, and: Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls trans. by Ellen L. Babinsky (review)

552 BOOK REVIEWS MeisterEckhart and the Béguine Mystics:Hadewijch ofBrabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. Edited by Bernard McGinn. (New York: Continuum. 1994. Pp. x, 166. $1995.) Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls. Translated and introduced by Ellen L. Babinsky. (New York: Paulist Press. 1993. Pp. x, 249. $24.95 cloth, $17.95 paperback.) The growing interest in medieval women's religious literature, as evidenced in the proliferation ofcritical editions,translations, and scholarly studies oftheir works over the past several decades, has now led to the establishment and exploration of a new and promising area ofmedieval studies, namely, the affinities between these authors and their medieval male counterparts. Since Meister Eckhart has long been one of the most widely studied of the latter group, it is not surprising that the volume Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics should be one of the first book-length publications to explore this new frontier. Growing out ofpapers delivered during two sessions ofthe twenty-eighth International Conference on Medieval Studies held at Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1993, the book includes studies by eight scholars, including a lucid introduction by the editor, Bernard McGinn, and a carefully nuanced conclusion by Richard Woods. The other six papers—by Paul Dietrich, Amy Hollywood, Maria Lichtmann , Saskia Murk-Jansen, Michael Sells, and Frank Tobin—examine affinities between the work of Eckhart and that of the individual béguines named in the book's subtitle. For the most part, the authors do not claim that Eckhart was directly influenced by the writings of these béguines, most of whom lived a generation or two earlier (although Amy Hollywood is less hesitant than the others in this regard ). Instead, they are intent on showing, in the words of Michael Sells, that there was "a sustained and intricate conversatio between the Beguine tradition of vernacular theology that in some ways culminated with Porete and the formal traditions (Neo-Platonism, scholasticism) that reached another sort of culmination with Eckhart" (p. 146). Among the common themes and vocabulary of this conversatio are those of the desert or wasteland, detachment, nothingness, and (especially in the case ofPorete) the soul's reversion to the innocence ofits precreated being. It should be noted that while none of the authors overlook differences between Eckhart and the béguines, this is particularly true of Woods, who insists that showing the extent to which Eckhart drew upon a common tradition of mystical theology does not diminish"the luster of his originality " but instead "augments the stature of his creativity, revealing his sensitivity to the crucial spiritual and indeed theological issues which these prophetic figures had raised to new levels of awareness and expression" (p. 164). A useful complement to this important exploratory volume is a new English translation of Porete's only book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, the first such translation to have been produced since Porete's authorship of the treatise was discovered by Romana Guarnieri half a century ago. Ellen Babinsky's lengthy in- BOOK REVIEWS 553 traduction provides an overview of the beguine movement, an account of the reasons that led to Porete's execution as a heretic, and reflections on this beguine 's understanding of the nature of the soul, its spiritual progress, and its transformation and union with God. The translator's endnotes regularly elucidate obscure parts of the text, while the extensive bibliography will be appreciated by readers who wish to delve more deeply into some of the issues raised by Porete's text. James A.Wiseman, O.S.B. The Catholic University ofAmerica TheArt ofDevotion in the Late MiddleAges in Europe, I3OO to 1500. By Henk van Os, with Hans Nieuwdorp, Bernhard Ridderbos, Eugène Honée. Translated from the Dutch by Michael Doyle. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994. Pp. 192; 85 color illustrations; 110 black and white illustrations . $49.50.) This is not an easy study to define. It is at once a catalogue accompanying an exhibition of the same title and a lavishly illustrated book intended to last beyond the exhibition of the featured objects. While exhibition catalogues by nature often play a dual role, this one reveals a greater than usual intimacy between the works chosen...