Scholar Q&A: Anna Harrison, Ph.D.

Editor’s Note: Anna Harrison, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Her book “Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community Among the Nuns of Helfta” will be published on August 15, 2022 by Liturgical Press. In the post below, Dr. Harrison writes about her new book examining the spiritual significance of community to the Cistercian nuns of Helfta.

Q: Why study the Middle Ages? 

Anna Harrison, Ph.D.: Medieval people had complex, varied, contradictory, and sometimes profound and paradoxical thoughts about God, self, other, community, and the cosmos. Both their similarities and their differences from modern people may surprise us. A study of the Middle Ages may yield perceptions about reality to which we might not otherwise be attuned. Women and men took up questions that are of enduring interest, including questions about the relationship of body to self and self to other, about the nature and meaning of love and suffering, and about leadership in community, including women’s leadership — which was far more varied in and significant to medieval religious culture than we might suppose.

Q: What prompted you to study Helfta and the community there?  

Two things prompted me to study the Helfta literature. First, I wanted to work on women’s religious literature and, second, I wanted to work on the theme of community. The Helfta writings are the largest collection of female-authored writings from the 13th century (running close to 1,250 printed pages), and they’re evidence of the Helfta nuns’ wholehearted investment in the topic of community.

Q: What sources do you use to tell this story? 

My sources are the three surviving works produced entirely at Helfta and associated with Mechtild of Hackeborn (1241–ca. 1298/99) and Gertrude of Helfta (1256–ca. 1301/2). Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises is a series of loosely organized prayers, chants, and litanies based chiefly on the liturgy. The Herald and the Book of Special Grace are composite, hybrid creations, weaving together accounts of revelations and ecstasies, spiritual teachings, prayers, and a variety of testimonies to the exemplary devotion of Gertrude and Mechtild as well as that of Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn (1223–1292), and to the piety of the Helfta nuns considered collectively.   

Q: Why are the nuns and community at Helfta important? 

The contributions of medieval women to the religiosity of the period continues to go underappreciated. The Helfta compositions provide us access to a theologically expert monastic household of women who were confident in the value of what they had to say for a wide audience. For some, this may be reason enough to investigate the monastery’s writings. The work is in itself remarkable. Communally composed by an indeterminate number of nuns, it offers insight into the emotions, thoughts, and experiences of a group of highly educated and self-consciously literary women, who took up topics about the relationship between individual and community that continue to compel many of us.

Q: Your book is essentially about community. In your research, what surprised you about the nuns at Helfta and their community? 

In the nuns’ perception, individual well-being is tied uncompromisingly to the spiritual health of the whole, all human beings, living and dead, with the exception of those in hell, and there is virtually nothing any of us does that does not have implications for the whole. This is because we are one body — a reality the Helfta writings never tire of impressing upon the reader. From a certain vantage point, the nuns’ preoccupation is conventional. It stands apart for its centrality to their thought, their eager, go-at-it exploration of the relationship between individual and community, their sunny stance about the possibility of reconciling one person’s desires with those of others, their sensitivity to the lack of hard boundaries between selves and their confidence in the power of the individual to move Christ himself.

The nuns’ literature abounds in surprises. I give three examples, but I could give many. One, I did not expect the nuns’ extravagant sense of their own contributions to the salvation of the world. Two, I did not anticipate their perception that as God’s love relationship with an individual person intensified, it generated a flowing out of love on God’s part, which, correspondingly, traveled outward in ever-wider circles; related to this, there is no relationship between two that does not, to the nuns, spill out to include others. Three, I was surprised to learn to learn of their confidence in the perduring of this-life-like relationships between the living and dead and among souls in heaven, speaking to a concern of earlier monastic thinkers, such as their twelfth-century Cistercian predecessor, Bernard of Clairvaux, who feared death would dilute the experience of particular love relationships enjoyed in this life.

Q: Where did the title of your book “Thousands and Thousands of Lovers” come from? 

The title is from a passage in the Herald in which the visionary nun Gertrude of Helfta saw John the Evangelist embrace Christ and prostrated herself at Christ’s feet, humility keeping her at a distance. John called out to her, saying:

“Do not let my fellowship [with Christ] cause you to flee. Behold the neck that is enough for the embrace of thousands and thousands of lovers, the mouth that offers sweetness to the kisses of many, and the ears that keep secrets safe from the whispers of all.”

John intercedes to invite Gertrude to imitate him, and because the Herald presents Gertrude as a model to its readers, the invitation to her is extended to all.

Q: What is your favorite story about life at Helfta? 

I have many favorites! One story I love is from a vision Gertrude receives when an interdict is issued (on account of undisclosed financial matters) that prohibits the nuns from receiving communion. Let me quote the text to try to convey its flavor. When Gertrude asked Christ how he will console her and her sisters for the deprivation, he responded:

“I will increase my delights among you. Just as a husband enjoys his wife more freely in private than in public, so your sighs and desolations shall be my delights. Progress in love of me shall increase among you, just as hidden fire spreads more widely. On top of this, just as rising water overflows suddenly with force, just so shall my delights in you and your love in me overflow, both increasing.”

The interdict became the occasion of an acute sense of relationality on the part of the nuns, with Christ and, therefore, with all the faithful, as we read elsewhere, because it paradoxically offered exceptionally close contact with Christ, in some sense because of and not in spite of the official pronouncements of exclusion of the nuns from community.

Learn more about Anna Harrison, Ph.D., and her new book at: https://litpress.org/Products/CS289P/Thousands-and-Thousands-of-Lovers