The Mystical Presence of Christ: The Exceptional and the Ordinary in Late Medieval Religion

The Mystical Prescence of Christ is a long-awaited monograph on the Christocentric nature of piety in the late Middle Ages, which looks at an underexplored theme in the scholarly field: the presence of Christ in the devotional lives of both ordinary and extraordinary individuals. Richard Kieckhefer traces the phenomenon of Christ's mystical presence—his manifest presence—in literature of revelation (hagiographies, devotional texts, and autobiographies) written in the fourteenth century in Germany, Italy, and England, mostly looking at female accounts, since his underlying argument suggests a gendered nature of such experience. Kieckhefer's study is driven by a central question: What differences and connections are there between exceptional and ordinary religion? (2, 90). His answer is that the interweaving of Christ's presence with everyday life is common to all as an unexceptional presence that grounds any exceptional manifestations. As such, mystical presence remains a privilege and presupposes spiritual presence, which is universal to all (337).Kieckhefer has to be commended for his thoroughness and depth in drawing connections between Continental and English figures whose experience of "Christophany"—the manifestation of Christ's presence—ranges from strong to weak claims of exceptionality (covering claims about experience and experiences proper). His approach, which considers revelation literature, while grounding each writing in its particular context and agenda, articulates clearly the difficulty embedded in working with accounts of Christ's mystical presence. His historical lens, looking at texts as unraveling a particular outgrowth of the period's religious culture anchored in specific historical contexts, offers welcome grounding. Kieckhefer's intratextual approach considers the text as a given standard edition, and its emergence as such is central for cultural history (127). The study pays close attention to transition between modes of experiencing Christ, which are defined as presupposition, intuition, and perception (89). These transitions are evidence in themselves that revelatory experiences were available within late medieval culture. Such a methodological approach aims to abstract itself from particularities of authorship, redaction, and transmission to focus on the texts themselves. Although Kieckhefer admits that fluidity between interpretative frameworks (such as considering these transitions as a psychological process or a redaction process) might allow different perspectives, meticulous attention to the text yields better understanding of the perception of revelation.The first three chapters look at the "who" and the "how" of Christ's presence in fourteenth-century revelatory literature. Chapter 1 questions the overemphasis on Christ's humanity in the scholarly field when considering late medieval piety. Kieckhefer offers a much-needed corrective by underlining that any focus on Christ's humanity, and late medieval fascination with Christ's suffering for that matter, is grounded in Christ's divinity. Hence the language of Christ being "God" was often preferred. Medieval Christian culture could not dissociate the person lying in the manger or the one dying on the cross from the divine person, one God, two natures. It was by virtue of Christ's divinity that he could be ubiquitously present, accessible to all.Chapter 2 provides Kieckhefer's perspective on literature of revelation, which should be taken on its own terms and is not meant as fiction. The chapter delineates the particular set of narrative strategies that undergirds the era's religious literature interested in Christ and Christophany. Revelatory writings with a focus on Christ often make use of a magisterial discourse, where Christ reveals himself and speaks directly to people, a discourse which sometimes becomes authotheological when Christ speaks jointly from his divinity and humanity. Another narrative strategy is when the historical Christ enters a person's temporality, what Kieckhefer calls transtemporality. For example, the child Christ or the Man of Sorrows thus enters Christina Ebner's, Margaret Ebner's, Christina of Hane's, and Margery Kempe's particular temporality, revealing his entrance into a specific time from eternity. Late medieval writers also put forward Christ's divinized humanity, as he appears in human form yet divinized such as in the transfiguration. The fusion of mystical and devotional language, where meditation on Christ's humanity progresses to contemplation on the God-man, is the fourth narrative strategy prevalent in these writings. Overall, the texts under scrutiny have a strong tendency to speak of Christ as God, even emphasizing the Trinity. Such conception is ordinary, while the experience of Christ in his divinity is exceptional (59).Chapter 3 traces the process of presupposition, intuition, and perception of Christ's presence. Presupposition is ordinary, perception is exceptional, but intuition is complex and cannot be easily assigned to either category. Presupposition acknowledged that Christ's ubiquitous presence was commonly accepted and witnessed in conventional objects, behaviors, and language. Perception was made manifest in writings through locutions and visions. Intuition, however, was a more elusive experience of Christ's presence, experienced through the senses. The inner senses were in themselves capable of perceiving dialogue and narratable sequences of events. Dorothea of Montau's outer senses were hence closed by Christ as he opened her inner senses, allowing her intellect to become clearly illuminated and enabling her to perceive him more clearly (109). The abundant record of extraordinary experience is contrasted by the fewer accounts of Christ's ubiquitous presence. Late medieval writers had little incentive to narrate commonplace experiences in comparison with remarkable spiritual experiences (129). In this study, Kieckhefer perhaps supplies an unbalanced emphasis on exceptional piety to the detriment of ordinary experiences of Christ as represented in contemporary pastoral and catechetical literature, for example.The three following chapters can be perceived as case studies expounding, building on, and expanding on the concepts established in the first three chapters. Chapter 4 traces how experience of Christ in ordinary prayer could lead to contemplation through meditations on events of the life of Christ, through repetitive prayers with almost hypnotic effects, or through the use of devotional images. The texts under scrutiny "say little or nothing about . . . specialized forms of prayer" (164); rather, they narrate the mystical presence of Christ grounded in commonplace devotional practices shared by committed late medieval Christians and reflections of ordinary piety. Chapter 5 similarly grounds mystical presence in ordinary piety, in the communal exercise of liturgy, and in the preparation and celebration of liturgical feasts. Liturgical visions in convent literature narrate Christ's ordinary presence in the sacrament and in the service, a wondrous phenomenon in itself made exceptional through Christ's manifestation to the nuns. Veronica Negroni of Binasco's own ecstasies during mass is a paramount example of the exceptional entering the ordinary (189).Chapters 6, 7, and 8 all consider to "whom" Christ's mystical presence is made manifest. In chapter 6, Kieckhefer makes an argument for a gendered phenomenon. As he underlines, male saints' vitae focus on the religious's activities in the world, their outward rather than inner lives. Walter Hilton might be an anomaly in that matter, however his experience of Christ's presence is devoid of narrative context, as well as locutions from Christ, pointing more to intuition rather than perception. Similarly, Meister Eckart's "Christ-mysticism" is rather apophatic, while Henry de Suso's experience of Christ offers more narrative context and grounding in everyday life in his Life of the Servant, where a devotional portion helps contextualize the mystical material. Nonetheless, Suso's experience of Christ's mystical presence is less grounded in experience in comparison with female accounts that focused on quotidian affairs and liturgical practices. Chapter 7 covers what Kieckhefer calls "inculturation," the process of Christ presenting and adapting himself to specific cultures. Most often, the identity Christ reveals himself in corroborates the contemplative's specific occasion, whether a deathbed experience or a specific religious feast. Christ's manifestation in specific roles underlines his recurring willingness to enter history and the human condition. Chapter 8 focuses on Christ's manifestation in communal settings. Visions and apparitions feed into the devotional culture of the entire community even when they are experienced by only one individual person, pointing at the social character of mystical experience.Chapter 9 takes Dorothea of Montau as a case study. Her vita, written by Johannes Marienwerder, reveals "a mesh of remembered and anticipated, reconstructed and preconstructed speech" as well as multiple layers of discourse (283). Dorothea's experience of Christ is rather inverted; her ordinary, everyday life is suffused with spiritual meaning and Christ's exceptional manifestations have become ordinary to her. Her emphasis on the sacrality of the quotidian exceeds the normal expectations of hagiography, as everything that takes place in her daily life might become a trigger for a perception of Christ. Christ's presence is made manifest to Dorothea in everyday matters, as the mystical bridegroom, and as instructor. While Dorothea's vita, replete with details, can be perceived as controversial, due to Marienwerder's use of male hagiographic conventions and Dorothea's own experience of Christ portrayed as controlling and at times possibly brutal, it speaks vividly to the differences in context and in the personality of those experiencing him.Chapter 10 and the conclusion address the history of late medieval Christophany in all of its complexity, including issues of skepticism, self-deception, and pathological or demonic delusion, or else of Christ's absence. These exceptional experiences caused at times apprehension, which could be checked against discretio spirituum. Overall, however, the routine of daily piety and sometimes exceptional experiences formed the backbone of late medieval Christocentric piety, where individuals' experiences were weaved together with that of communities and where intuition and perception of Christ's mystical presence fed into the universal presupposition of his presence. By demonstrating the extent to which extraordinary piety was intricately weaved together with ordinary religion, Kieckhefer reconciles two subjects of scholarly inquiry and helps lay the foundation for an integrated and wholesome investigation of late medieval religious culture for years to come.