Betrachtungen des Todes: Formen und Funktionen der meditatio mortis in der europäischen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts (review)

This study, with its wealth of references and rich basis in a variety of texts of the seventeenth century, is a welcome addition to recent scholarship on meditation practices and devotional texts of the early modern period in northern Europe. In particular, it complements Udo Sträter's fine Meditation und Kirchenreform in der lutherischen Kirche des 17. Jahrhunderts (1995) in that Wodianka's study is comparative in nature, extending to England and France as well as Germany, and incorporating Catholic and Reformed, as well as Lutheran, devotional texts. Furthermore, it includes, and at times concentrates on, poetic texts as opposed to prose meditations. A selection of poems not otherwise readily accessible is included in an appendix.

However, the title, Betrachtungen des Todes (Meditations on Death), is somewhat misleading. The study does not treat meditations on death or devotional activities that function as preparation for death so much as it looks at examinations of conscience with reference to the Bußpsalmen (psalms of contrition), Christ's Passion, and what will happen following the death of the individual. In this context it is interesting to note, for instance, that among the works of Martin Moller it is the Soliloquia de Passione Iesu Christi and not the deathbed handbook Manuale de praeparatione ad mortem that receives the most attention in this study. Indeed, the declared stopping point for this study is the very place when devotional texts that constitute preparation for death (Todesbetrachtungen of various genres as well as deathbed accounts and self-examining autobiographies) in fact became a dominant form of devotional literature: the rise of Pietism in the late seventeenth century. Nevertheless, a few early Pietist texts and authors (especially Spener) are included among the many examined in this study.

On the other hand, the treatment of examinations of the conscience (Gewissen) together with the analysis of the implications of self-analysis for construction of self-identity — the themes that actually stand at the center of this study — are thought-provoking and often insightful. Particularly valuable are the author's insights into the uses that some meditative texts make of the new science of anatomy, her examination of various treatments of the dangers of excessive self-orientation within meditation (including Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621), and her perceptions about the involvement of women as consumers and authors of meditative devotional texts. She offers useful remarks on devotional texts written expressly for women, including those designed for the use of pregnant and birthing women.

More significantly, Wodianka focuses on one of the most interesting women authors of such texts, Margarethe Susanne von Kuntsch, and analyzes her textual production and some individual poems within several different contexts. Two poems by Kuntsch are printed in the appendix. Other women authors whose works are analyzed in the study include Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, Lady Elizabeth Delaval, Anne Vaughan Lock, and an anonymous English Benedictine nun from the cloister of Cambrai. Many other women writers receive briefer mentions that contextualize their works within the material studied: Elizabeth-Sophie Chéron, Margaret Hoby, Dorothée de Iulien, Jane Leade, Madame de Blémur, Anne Picardet, Sibylle Ursula Herzogin zu Schleswig-Holstein (née von Braunschweig-Lüneburg- Wolfenbüttel), Mary Sidney, Jane Turner, and Magdalena Sibylla Herzogin (falsely as "Gräfin") von Württemberg (née Landgräfin von Hessen-Darmstadt).

The conclusion of the book sums up some of the main threads in a useful way, but also looks ahead to the next stage of development, Pietism, in a manner that is particularly helpful. Wodianka explains her intentional exclusion of devotional songs from the study, and in the process contributes to a greater understanding of their use in devotional practices of the time as an effective prophylactic against the dangers of melancholy and despair that...