Viator 44 No. 2 (2013) 175200. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.103345

TO TASTE (SAPERE) WISDOM (SAPIENTIA): EUCHARISTIC DEVOTION IN THE WRITINGS OF GERTRUDE OF HELFTA

Ella Johnson*

Abstract: This article examines the mystical language of sensation in the writings of Gertrude the Great of Helfta (12561302). In particular, it considers Gertrudes gustatory language in the context of that presented in the reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the established Christian spiritual tradition, especially innovations made by each Augustines and Bernards rhetoric of taste. The article argues that Gertrude leaves behind the more dualist aspects of their rhetoric by exploiting their more affirmative concepts of the bodily forms of knowing. Such body affirmative concepts fundamentally form the vocabulary that Gertrude uses to articulate a unique, somatic journey from human knowing to divine wisdom, as well as the carefully crafted discussion of Eucharistic devotion from which it flows. Thus, the article ultimately reveals the linguistic strategies and singular ideas that make Gertrude strike out on her own in relation to conventions that precede her and even to her contemporary thirteenth- and fourteenth-century religious women. Keywords: Gertrude of Helfta, Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairvaux, sensory language, taste, touch, wisdom, liturgy, Eucharist, epistemology. Inspired by the language of Scripture, 1 writers throughout Christian history have drawn extensively from vocabulary of the five bodily senses to discuss God and how humans know God.2 When it comes to the sense of taste, in particular, authors from the Latin tradition, like Augustine of Hippo and Bernard of Clairvaux, made use of the fact that, in its Latin verb form, sapere, is the root for the Latin word for wisdom, sapientia. But, for these Christian writers, more is at stake in the sapere/sapientia correlation than simply a shared etymological root. This is due to the belief that it is through the sense of taste, in particular, that human persons make the most direct physical contact with the body of God. To taste (sapere) the body of God in Eucharis-*Systematic Theology, St. Bernards School of Theology and Ministry, 120 French Road, Rochester, NY, 14618. I am grateful to Professor Robert Sweetman for his advice and discussion on an earlier version of this article. I also owe special thanks to the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

1 The following abbreviations are used:HGLK IIIGertrud the Great of Helfta, The Herald of Gods Loving Kindness, Books One and Two, trans. Alexandra Barratt (Kalamazoo 1991); HGLK IIIGertrud the Great of Helfta, The Herald of Gods Loving Kindness, Book Three, trans. Alexandra Barratt (Kalamazoo 1999); Le HrautLe Hraut, ed. and trans. Pierre Doyre et al., 4 vols., Gertrude dHelfta:Oeuvres spirituelles. Sources chrtiennes 139, 143, 255, 331, Srie des texts monastiques doccident 25, 27, 48 (Paris 19681986); Les ExercicesLes Exercices, ed. and trans. Jacques Hourlier and Albert Schmitt, Gertrude dHelfta:Oeuvres spirituelles. Sources chrtiennes 127, Srie des texts monastiques doccident 19 (Paris 1967); SBOBernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera, eds. Jean Leclercq et al., 8 vols. (Rome 19571977). For works contained within the SBO, the following abbreviations are used:Conv.Sermo ad clericos de conversione; Dil.De diligendo Deo; Div.Sermones de diversis; SCCSermo super cantica canti-corum; SDDSermo de diversis; SentSententiae; SCPierre Doyre et al., eds. and trans., Gertrude dHelfta:Oeuvres spirituelles, Sources chrtiennes, vols. 139, 143, 255, 331 (Paris 19681986); SEGer-trude the Great of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, trans. and ed. Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis (Kalama-zoo 1989). Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own.

2 For recent work on the importance of the doctrine of the spiritual senses in religious writing and theol-ogy in the later Middle Ages, see Boyd Taylor Coolman, Knowing God by Experience:the Spiritual Senses in the Theology of William of Auxerre (Washington, DC 2004); Rachel Fulton, Taste and See that the Lord is Sweet (Ps. 33:9):the Flavor of God in the Monastic West, Journal of Religion 86 (2006) 169204; Rosemary Drage Hale, Taste and See, for God is Sweet:Sensory Perception and Memory in Medieval Christian Mystical Experience, Vox Mystica:Essays on Medieval Mysticism in Honor of Professor Valerie M. Lagorio, ed. Valerie Marie Lagorio and Anne Clark Bartlett (Cambridge 1995) 314; Gordon Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, Studies in Medieval History and Culture 14 (New York 2002). For an important recent study in early Christianity, see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation:Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 42 (Berkeley 2006).

176 ELLA JOHNSON tic communion is to gain wisdom of God (Sapientia). Therefore, discourse about the gustatory experience of the Eucharist offers us a conspicuous opportunity to examine how writers throughout Christian history have thought about and attempted to articu-late the journey from human sensory knowledge to divine wisdom.

This article explores gustatory language of wisdom in the writings of Gertrude the Great of Helfta (12561302) in relation to that presented in the reception history (Wir-kungsgeschichte) of the established Christian spiritual tradition. While still unknown to many, Gertrude is an important figure in this tradition for several reasons. She is the only woman in Christian history with the honorary title, the Great, attributed to her not only because she is a great visionary, but also a great theologian of the Middle Ages.3 Living with Mechthild of Hackeborn and Mechthild of Magdebrug at the Benedictine/Cistercian convent of Helfta during its heyday of visionary, liturgical and scholarly activity, 4 Gertrude stands as a symbol of the many other medieval women religious who experienced visions, and taught and wrote theology within their communities. Yet, Gertrude distinguishes herself from many of her female contemporaries in the way that she writes her visionary literature in skilled Latin prose, rather than the vernacular. Moreover, her theology, which is innovative in many ways, is founded upon and interlaced with liturgical tropes and theological themes from the established Latin spiritual tradition.

Gertrudes extant works are: Legatus memorialis abundantiae divinae pietatis (The Memorial Herald of the Abundance of Divine Love), consisting of her autobiography and visionary accounts, and Documenta spiritualium exercitionum (Teachings of Spir-itual Exercises), containing seven liturgically-based meditations. Written during her thirties and forties (in the 1280s and 1290s),5 and arising out of the self-consciously literary convent at Helfta, Gertrudes writing is highly erudite and astute. It evinces familiarity with the works of Origen, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bede, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas, and Albert the Great, in addition to those of the women from her own community (e.g., Mechthild of Hackeborn and Mechthild of Magdeburg).6 Of course, Gertrude does not write in the scholastic mode

3 Indeed, theological approbation of Gertruds writings came immediately after her death, first from

those who knew her. Mary Jeremy Finnegan, The Women of Helfta:Scholars and Mystics (Athens1991) 96. 4 Finnegans work (n. 3 above) is the standard account on the Helfta monastery. For the community at

Helfta, see also Anna Harrison Oh! What Treasure is in this Book? Writing, Reading, and Community at the Monastery of Helfta, Viator 39 (2008) 75106. A great deal of scholarly attention has focused on the liturgical devotion in the visionary writings of Gertrude and the nuns of Helfta. See for example eadem, I Am Wholly Your Own:Liturgical Piety and Community Among the Nuns of Helfta. Church History 78 (2009) 579; Hilda Graef, From Other Lands:St. Gertrude, Mystical Flowering of the Liturgy, Orate Fra-tres 20 (1945/46) 171174; eadem, Gertrud von Helfta, Der siebenfarbige Bogen. Auf den Spuren der groen Mystiker, ed. Ernst Schoenwiese (Frankfurt 1959) 318333, eadem., Mditation et clbration. A propos du mmorial de sainte Gertrude, La liturgie et les paradoxes Chrtiens, ed. Jean Leclercq (1963) 170204; Jean Leclercq, Liturgy and Mental Prayer in the Life of Saint Gertrude, Sponsa Regis 32 (1960) 15; Maria Teresa Porcile Santiso, Saint Gertrude and the Liturgy, Liturgy 26 (1992) 5384; Cyprian Vaggagini, The Example of a Mystic:St. Gertrude and Liturgical Spirituality, in idem, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy (Collegeville 1976) 740803.

5 See Michael Bangert, Demut in Freiheit:Studien zur geistlichen Lehre im Werk Gertruds von Helfta (Wrzburg 1997) 251. See also Harrison, Sense of Community (n. 4 above) 53 n. 3.

6 Theresa A. Halligan, The Community at Helfta. Its Spirituality and Celebrated members, in eadem, The booke of gostlye grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn (Toronto 1979) 3435. See also Miriam Schmitt,

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reserved to men of her day; instead, she structures her theological reflections, vision narratives and pious prescriptions according to the liturgical calendar and her devotion to it.7 In fact, communal celebrations of the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours are the most common sources of Gertrudes visions and ecstasies, and therefore, are also the inspiration of her visionary writing.8

This article examines how Gertrudes liturgically-based, gustatory language relates to innovations made by each Augustines and Bernards rhetoric of taste. The article argues that Gertrude leaves behind the more dualist aspects of both Augustines and Bernards use of sensory language by exploiting the more affirmative concepts of the bodily forms of knowing found within their writings. Such body affirmative concepts fundamentally form the vocabulary that Gertrude uses to articulate a unique, somatic journey from human knowing to divine wisdom, as well as the carefully crafted discussion of Eucharistic devotion from which it flows. Thus, while deepening our general understanding of the journey from human knowing to divine wisdom in the theological discourse and devotional instruction of the Christian tradition, the article ultimately reveals the linguistic strategies and singular ideas that make Gertrude strike out on her own in relation to the conventions that precede her and even to her contemporary thirteenth- and fourteenth-century religious women.

In order to grasp what is distinctive about the way Gertrude uses the language of taste and the innovative teachings which generate therefrom, we must first understand something about the alternatives available to her in the reception history (Wirkungs-geschichte) of the established tradition. I have chosen to focus on the language of sensation in the writings of Augustine and Bernard not only for their influence on the medieval West, but also for their influence on Gertrude. I will then note some of those themes I have found to be taken up and/or reinterpreted by Gertrude.

To the extent that Augustine allows for metaphorical language of the spiritual senses, he applies sight to the rest of the senses (i.e., hearing, smelling, taste and touch). In De Trinitate, for example, he says: Let us, therefore, rely principally on the testimony of the eyes for this sense of the body far excels the rest, and comes closer to

Gertrud of Helfta:Her Monastic Milieu (12561301) and her Spirituality, Cistercian Monastic WomenHidden Springs, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo 1995) 476.

7 See Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism:Men and Women in the New Mysticism (12001350) (New York 1998) 270; Vaggagini, The Example of a Mystic (n. 4 above) 740803; Graef, From Other Lands (n. 4 above) 171174.

8 Felix Vernet says that few works of mysticism are more overtly liturgical than the Helfta literature; Felix Vernet, Medieval Spirituality, (London 1930) 220223, 270. Sabine Spitzlei identifies Mechthild and Gertrude as liturgical mystics; Sabine Spitzlei, Erfahrungsraum Herz:Zur Mystik des Zisterzienserinnen-klosters Helfta im 13. Jahrhundert, (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt 1991) 77. Moreover, Anna Harrison ob-serves:The Helfta literatures portrayal of these women suggests that the nuns were quick to embellish a particular liturgical celebration with questions peculiar to each and to delve into details of the observance that especially intrigued them. The physical objects Mechthild and Gertrud saw and handled, the words they chanted and heard, seeped into their imagination. They gave rise to and became the stuff of visions, which suffused communal song, reception, or a gospel reading with complex layers of meaning, and which charged everyday routine with sometimes exalted, sometimes elaborate, and often deeply personal signifi-cance. Anna Harrison, Sense of Community Among the Nuns of Helfta (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univer-sity 2007) 158159.

178 ELLA JOHNSON spiritual vision, though it differs from it in kind.9 Moreover, in this development, Augustine subordinates the sight of the mind or spiritual vision to divine illumination. This is because, like the Middle Platonist Origen, Augustine says that God is only per-ceived by the part of the human personthe inner manwhich, like God, is also immaterial spirit. In his treatise, On Seeing God, Augustine declares: The Lord is spirit (2 Cor 3.17), and whoever adheres to the Lord is one spirit [with him] (1 Cor 6.17). Hence, the person who is able to see God invisibly can adhere to God incorporeally.10

Yet, despite his regard for sight and hearing as the most appropriate of the senses to discuss God and how humans know God, gustatory and tactile imagery is omnipresent in Augustines writings. Certainly, the very fact that Augustine uses such lowly lan-guage reveals a contrast with Origens Middle Platonic conceptions. Augustines lan-guage of taste is especially evident in his Confessions and Ennarrationes in Psalmos. He makes use of the sapere/ sapientia correlation, for example, when he comments on Colossians 3.1: If you have risen with Christ, show a taste for the higher wisdom.11

To discuss sapientia, Augustine not only uses language of tasting, but also lan-guage of sweetness (suavitas, dulcedo). For instance, he exclaims: O Wisdom, most sweet light of the purified mind!12 In Augustines usage here, wisdom is like a seasoning that makes what otherwise is tasteless and bitter (amarus), taste sweet (suavis). Christ, he says, was made sweet in order to overcome the separation be-tween God and humanity, and to liberate humanity in its bitterness. Commenting on Psalm 33.9, Augustine instructs: Listen to the psalm: taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet (suavis) to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter (amarus) to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness (dulcedinem); accept the pledge from so great a granary.13 Augustine uses the language of tasting and sweetness again to convey both a Christological and soteriological meaning in his commentary on Psalm 134.3 (Praise the Lord, for he is

9 Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Stephen McKenna (Washington, DC 1963) 316. Itaque potissimum

testimonio utamur oculorum. Is enim sensus corporis maxime excellit, et est visioni mentis pro sui generis diversitate vicinior. Augustine, De Trinitate XI.1.2, PL 42.985.

10 Dominus enim spiritus est, unde qui adhaeret Domino unus spiritus est. Proinde qui potest Deum invisibiliter videre, ipse Deo potest incorporaliter adhaerere. Augustine, Epistola 147.15.37, PL 33.613. Translated and quoted here from Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism:Gregory the Great through the Twelfth Century (New York 1994) 232.

11 Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York 1950) 728. Si resurrexistis cum Christo, quae sursum sunt sapite. Augustine, De civitate Dei 20.10, PL 41.675. See also Augustine, De Trinitate 5.2.3; Augustine, Confessions 6.1, 10.40.65, 11.11.13; Augustine, Sermones 43.7.9.

12 O suavissima lux purgatae mentis sapientia! Augustine, De libero arbitrio 2.16.43, PL 32.1264. See John C. Cavadini, The Sweetness of the Word:Salvation and Rhetoric in Augustines De doctrina christi-ana, De doctrina christiana:a Classic of Western Culture, ed. Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame 1995) 164181. Sweetness is also important to Augustine in his Confessions, particuarly in his prayers to Sapientia; see Augustine, Confessions 1.4.4, 2.6.3, 3.8.16, 7.3.5, 9.1.1, 10.3.4, 10.17.26, 11.19.25, 13.23.33. See also Franz Posset, The Sweetness of God, American Benedictine Review 44 (1993) 143178, esp. 147155.

13 Factus est tibi suavis, quia liberavit te. Amarus tibi fuisti, cum praesumeres in te. Bibe dulcedinem, accipe pignus tanti horrei. Augustine, Sermones de Scripturis, sermon 145.5, PL 38.794. Trans. Fulton, Taste and See (n. 2 above) 182. See also Franz Posset, Christi Dulcedo:The Sweetness of Christ in Western Christian Thought, Cistercian Studies Quarterly 30 (1995) 143178, esp. 147155; Fulton, Taste and See (n. 2 above) 169204; Hale, Taste and See (n. 2 above).

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good; sing to his name because it is sweet). He invites those who taste Christ to praise him:

Indeed, he would be good (bonus), but he would not be sweet (suavis) if he did not allow you to taste (gustare) him. And yet, he offered himself to men (homnibus), when he sent bread from heaven and gave his son, who is equal to him and who is what he is himself, to be made man and to be killed for men, that through that which you are (ut per hoc quod tu es), you might taste that which you are not (gustes quod non es). Indeed, it was a great thing for you to taste the sweetness of God (gustare suavitatem Dei), that sweetness so distant and exceedingly high, when you were cast down so low and lying in the utmost depths. Into this great separation you were sent a mediator He himself is the mediator, and thus he was made sweet (inde factus est suavis).14

For Augustine, then, Christ tastes sweet (suavis), rather than bitter (amarus), because of his salvific mediation between humanity and divinity. Christ overcomes the metaphysical gap or great separation between humanity and divinity, so that, through that which you are (ut per hoc quod tu es), you might taste that which you are not (gustes quod non es). It becomes clear, therefore, that Augustine uses lan-guage of taste, and accepts the material bodiliness implied by it, to convey the notion that the Incarnation of Christ makes the incorporeal Logos accessible to embodied human beings. Due to his belief in the body as essential to human nature, Augustine does not entirely eschew the lowly language of taste. Rather, at times, he deems it helpful.

It seems right to conclude, then, that, fascinated though Augustine is by the body, his accounts of the spiritual senses invariably gravitate toward language of the higher more spiritual sense of sight and hearing. Moreover, by assimilating these two senses to the illuminated mind, his writing reproduces the Origenist dualist conception of the spiritual senses as intellective agents of learning. Influenced as it is by his Neo-Platonic training, Augustines rhetoric of sight and hearing keeps with the established dualistic idea that language of touch and taste is base and inappropriate to discussions of how humans know God. However, we have also considered innovative and more integrative aspects of Augustines language of the spiritual senses. Indeed, deriving from his belief of body as essential to personhood, Augustine introduces the possibility of a physical kind of knowledge and approach to God. This is particularly clear in the continuous relationship he posits between the physical and spiritual sense of sight and also in his indication of a bodily, ritual kind of knowledge of the visible Word. As complex as his concept of the spiritual senses is, it Augustines use of lan-guage of the lowly senses that provides the foundation for Bernards almost exten-sive use of lowly sensory language to discuss how the human person knows and achieves union with God.

14 Forte esset bonus et suavis non esset, si tibi non daret posse gustare. Talem autem se praebuit

hominibus, ut etiam panem de coelo miserit, et Filium suum aequalem, qui hoc est quod ipse, dederit homi-nem faciendum, et pro hominibus occidendum; ut per hoc quod tu es, gustes quod non es. Multum enim ad te erat gustare suavitatem Dei; quia remota erat illa et nimis alta, tu autem nimis abjectus et in imo jacens. In magna ista separatione missus es Mediator Ipse est Mediator, inde factus est suavis. Augustine, Ennarrationes in Psalmos, In psalmum CXXXIV, par. 5, PL 37.17411742; trans. Fulton, Taste and See (n. 2 above) 177.

180 ELLA JOHNSON

Familiar with the writings of Augustine among others, Bernard certainly knows the basic idea and tradition of the spiritual senses.15 Though he does not theorize about the subject in any systematic sense, he frequently draws sensory language from the Bible, especially in his well-known commentary on the Song of Songs, to discuss the human persons encounter with God.16 When he uses such imagery, he upholds the estab-lished idea, common to both Origen and Augustine, that the spiritual senses belong to the inner, spiritual person, and that they are analogous to, yet distinct from the corporeal senses. Just as the corporeal senses allow the human person to perceive material things, the spiritual senses allow the human person to perceive spiritual thingsi.e., to know God.17

In addition, like the works of Augustine before him, Bernards writing often rank sight as more noble and appropriate to God than the other senses.18 He also keeps with the traditional pattern by subordinating the sight of the mind to divine illumina-tion,19 and by associating truth with sight.20 As is the case in Augustines work, these instances in Bernards texts seem to be based on the assumption that God is best per-ceived by the part of the human personthe inner manwhich, like God, is also immaterial spirit. In his Sermon 31 on the Song, Bernard says: My opinion is that of the Apostle, who said that he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him (1 Cor. 6.17) God is spirit (John 4.24), who is lovingly drawn by the beauty of that soul whom he perceives to be guided by the Spirit, and devoid of any desire to submit to the ways of the flesh, especially if he sees that it burns with love for himself.21

15 On Bernards use of and familiarity with Origen and Augustine, see Jean Leclercq, Aux sources des

sermons sur les Cantiques, Receuil dtudes sur saint Bernard et ses crits (Rome 19621969) 275319, esp. 281283; Rudy, Mystical Language (n. 2 above) 140141 n. 1; Jean Prosper Theodorus Deroy, Bernardus en Origenes:Enkele opmerkingen over de invloed van Origenes op Sint Bernardus Sermones super Cantica canticorum (De Toorts 1963). Michael Casey summarizes scholarship on Bernards written sources in A Thirst for God:Spiritual Desire in Bernard of Clairvauxs Sermons on the Song of Songs, Cistercian Studies Series 77 (Kalamazoo 1988) 2232. Jean Leclercq shows that the corpus Origenianum was held and diffused at Clairvaux, Signy, Pontigny, and St. Thierry during the 13th c.; see Jean Leclercq, Origne au XII sicle, Irenikon 24 (1951) 425439. Bernards seventy-fourth Sermon on the Song of Songs is modeled on Origens description of the Words visit to the soul; see Bernard of Clairvaux, SCC 74.57.

16 Several scholars have noted the concept of spiritual senses within Bernards writings. See Jean Mou-roux, Sur les critres de lexprience spirituelle dapres les Sermons sur le Cantique de Cantiques, Saint Bernard Thologien, Analecta Cisterciensia (Rome 1953) 251267; Jean Leclercq, De quelques procds du style biblique du S. Bernard, Receuil dtudes sur saint Bernard et ses crits (Rome 1962) 260263; Casey, A Thirst for God (n. 15 above) 296298, 231234; Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 4565.

17 Bernard asserts that just as the body, that is the exterior man, will receive back its life and sense at the time of the resurrection, so too will the soul or interior man receive back its life and sense; that is knowledge and love. (Et sicut corpus, id est exterior homo, in resurrectione sua vitam et sensum recipiet, ita et in resurrectione sua vitam et sensum anima, id est interior homo, recipit, id est cognitionem et amo-rem.) SDD 116:1316, SBO 6, 1:393. Trans. Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 52. See also SDD 10, SBO 6, 1:122124.

18 Bernard explicitly ranks the five corporeal senses in three places, SDD 10, SBO 6, 1:122124; SDD 116, SBO 6, 1:393394; and in Sent 3:73, SBO 6, 2:108112. In each of these places, he ranks sight as the highest sense. See also SCC 28.45 for a priority given to sight.

19 See SCC 41.3 and 45.56. 20 See esp. SDD 116; SCC 50.8. 21 Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs II, trans. Kilian J. Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series 7

(Kalamazoo 1976) 129. Id loquimur quod Apostolus dicit, quoniam QUI ADHAERET DEO, UNUS SPIRITUS EST Itaque in spiritu sit ista coniunctio, qui SPIRITUS EST DEUS, et concupisicit decorem

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While Bernard uses language of sight to discuss the human persons intimate union with God, he cannot be said to favour such language. In fact, in a number of places, given the textual legacies available to him, it is as if he instinctively chooses to focus primarily on the references to the lowly senses of taste and touch. This is certainly the case when examining how he appropriates especially the sense of taste found within Augustines eclectic sensory language.22

Yet, Bernard uses such language to express his own, innovative ideas about the immediate relationship between God and the human person in this life. On the Song, for example, Bernard comments that the bride, who, while in her earthly life, can only hope for life in heaven and the clear and everlasting visio Dei, can still enjoy a taste or kiss of her divine Bridegroom in the shadow of contemplation.

She says: And his fruit is sweet to my taste, suggesting the taste of him she received in contemplation when sweetly inspired by love. But that was in shadow, because in a mirror and in a riddle. A time will come however when the shadows will wane and even entirely fade away with the advance of dawn, and a vision that is clear, as it is everlasting, will steal upon her, bringing not only sweetness to her taste but fulfillment to her heart, yet without surfeit: In his longed-for shadow I am seated, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.23

In a similar vein, Bernard often cites Psalm 33.9 (Taste and see that the Lord is sweet; Gustate et videte quam suavis est Dominus) to articulate how the taste of union with God, in this life, precedes and anticipates something of the sight of God in the next life. For instance, he writes: There [in heaven] will be fulfillment; here there is a taste. Therefore, taste and see that the Lord is sweet.24

It seems, then, that Bernard follows in Augustines footsteps by referencing the lan-guage of sight, tasting and sweetness as it appears in Psalm 33.9. Yet, unlike Augus-tine, Bernard makes an important distinction between the sense of sight and the senses of touch and taste. Sight allows the human person knowledge of things at a distance, by means of a medium other than a body, while taste and touch are mediated because

animae illius quam forte adverterit in spiritu ambulantem, et curam carnis non perficientem in desiderio, praesertim si sui amore flagrantem conspexerit. SCC 31.6, SBO 1:223.

22 Bernards doctrine has correspondence with the reception history of Gregory the Greats work, but a comparison between Bernard and Gregory is outside of the bounds of this study. Bernard Mcginn assumes that Bernards concept of the spiritual senses is a version of that found in Origen, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. Though his assumption of a continuous and coherent concept of the tradition of the spiritual senses differs from the argument of this article, McGinn shows some important continuous elements be-tween the doctrines of Bernard and Gregory the Great; see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism (n. 10 above) 185190.

23 Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs III, trans. Kilian J. Walsh and Irene M. Edmonds (Kalamazoo 1979) 20. Unde ait:ET FRUCTUS EIUS DULCIS GUTTURI MEO, gustum contemplationis eius significans, quem obtinuerat per amorem suaviter sublevata. At istud in umbra, quia PER SPECULUM ET IN AENIGMATE. Eritque, cum declinaverint umbrae, crescent lumine, immo penitus disparuerint, et subintrabit sicut perspicua, ita et perpetua visio, eritque non modo suavitas gutturi, sed et satietas ventri, sine fastidio tamen:SUB UMBRA EIUS QUAM DESIDERAVERAM SEDI, ET FRUCTUS EIUS DULCIS GUTTURI MEO. SCC 48:8; SBO 2:7273. See also SDD 3:1; Sent. 3:97.

24 Illic erit edimpletio, hic est gustus. Gustamus enim hic et videmus quoniam suavis est Dominus SDD 41.12, SBO 6, 1. See also Dil. 9.26, 15.39; SCC 19.7; 50.8; Sent. 3:22

182 ELLA JOHNSON they require that the objects known contact the body directly.25 Yet, because of the direct physical contact the senses of taste and touch make with material objects, the senses of taste and touch are also immediate. Taste and touch, then, are understood as both mediated and as immediate senses. It is important to note that this tension is not a contradiction, but rather an effect of the juxtaposition of the senses of taste and touch viewed in two different respects. The basic distinction between the senses of sight and taste and touch is useful to Bernard because it suggests a key theological concept about the relation of self and body to other beings. Sight, for Bernard, communi-cates union with God at one remove, while touch and taste express the immediate presence of God.26 Indeed, in De diversis 10, he orders the senses according to how remote the objects they perceive are from the organ or faculty of sense. Beginning with the lowest, most bodily senses and ascending up to the highest, most spiritual senses, he says: touch corresponds to love of parents (tactui comparatur amor paren-tum); taste corresponds to love of brothers or fraternal love (gustui comparatur amor socialis, amor fratrum); smell corresponds to natural love (odoratui comparatur amor naturalis); hearing corresponds to spiritual love (auditui comparatur amor spiritualis), and sight corresponds to love of God (visui comparatur amor divinus).27 The criterion of the ordering is thus clear: spiritual vision, hearing and smell allow the soul to love objects more distant from itself, while spiritual taste and touch communicate directly, only with the friends and family who nourish the person in the flesh.

Noteworthy also is that, at times throughout his various writings, Bernard even uses Psalm 33.9 to teach that the taste of God in this life is prior to the sight of God in this next. For example: in On Conversion, he says, Unless you have tasted, you will not see.28 In some places, Bernard emphasizes the verb gustare of Psalm 33.9 more than videre, omitting videre in an echo of 1 Peter 2.3 gustatis quoniam dulcis est Deus, or even replacing it with another verb.29 For instance, in Sermon 19 on the Song, Bernard says that the odor of the spouses outpoured oil rouses them [i.e., the maidens] to taste and feel (gustare et sentire) that the Lord is sweet (Ps. 33.9).30 Moreover, in De consideratione, Bernard reinforces the priority he gives to taste as the highest most immediate channel to God in this life, by ranking it the third and highest form of consideration; he says it tastes what the first two hope for and smell.31 Like-wise, in On Loving God, he says that it is by tasting that those who love God for Gods sake attain this third and highest level of love, because they then discover and

25 See Hans Jonas, The Nobility of Sight: A Study in the Phenomenology of the Senses, Phenomenon

of Life:Toward a Philosophical Biology (Chicago 1982) 135156; Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 8.

26 See SCC 9.6; 9.10; 67.7, 67.48. 27 Div 10, SBO 6, 2:109110. Bernard offers the same ranking, based on the same criterion in Sent. 3:73. 28 Nisi gustaveris, non videbis. Conv. XIII.25, SBO 4:99. 29 See for example SCC 19.7; 50.4; Dil. 9.26. See also Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2

above) 62, 146, n. 37. 30 Habet oleum effusum sponsa, ad cuius illae [adulescentiae] exitantur odorem, gustare et sentire

quaem suavis est Dominus. SCC 19.7, SBO 1:112. 31 Ergo quod prima optat, secunda odorat, tertia gustat. Csi. 5.IV, SBO 3:469. Trans. Rudy, Mystical

Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 61.

TO TASTE (SAPERE) WISDOM (SAPIENTIA) 183

judge how sweet the Lord is.32 It is apparent, then, that Bernard sometimes breaks with the traditional sensory hierarchy to rank taste as the highest of the spiritual senses that can know God in this life. Though language of taste and touch is omnipresent in Augustines writings, Bernards writings give it real emphasis.33 Tactile imagery, for Bernard, suitably conveys that union with God in the here and now is immediate and mediated, and that this union is distinct from the remote and unmediated union of God in the life to come.

Furthermore, I am suggesting here that Bernard proposes not only a different kind of sensory hierarchy, but also a different kind of epistemology than that of Augustine (and Origen for that matter). By favoring gustatory imagery over language of sight, he makes the point that knowledge of God in this life is tasted, rather than seen, inso-far as God is beyond rational knowing. It is taste, not sight, he says, which makes one wise.34 Indeed, like Augustine, Bernard frequently weaves a net of puns on sa-por, sapere (to taste) and (to know), and its etymological connection to sapientia (wis-dom).35 He postulates: Perhaps sapientia, that is wisdom, is derived from sapor, which is taste.36 But, in subtle contrast to Augustine, Bernard places real emphasis on the experience (experientia) of the taste (sapere) of Gods wisdom (sapientia).

The Spirit alone reveals it [1 Cor. 2.10]: you will consult books to no purpose; you need experience instead. It is wisdom (Sapientia), and man does not know its price. It is drawn from hidden places, and this sweetness is found in the land of those who live sweetly [Job 28.1213]. Of course the Lord is sweetness, but unless you have tasted, you will not see (nisi gustaveris, non videbis). For it is said, Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. This is hidden manna, it is the new name which no one knows except him who receives it. Not learning, but anointing teaches it; not knowledge (scientia), but conscience (conscientia) grasps it.37 Cer-tainly, for Bernard, to taste that the Lord is sweet is more than to be able to see God, or to be in possession of divine knowledge; it is to experience. Experienced wisdom is not seen, but tasted, since it consists of an immediate, mediated relation to God, beyond intellectual know-ing.38

32 probari quam suavis est Dominus. Dil. 9.26, SBO 3:140; trans. Rudy, Mystical Language of

Sensation (n. 2 above) 61. See also Dil. 15.39. 33 Gordon Rudy points out Bernards departure from the traditional hierarchy of the spiritual senses. He

draws, however, more of a distinction between Augustine and Bernard, whereas I am attempting to point out more the subtle continuities and differences between the two authors works. See Rudy, Mystical Lan-guage of Sensation (n. 2 above) 17, 65.

34 Sapor sapientem facit. SCC 23:14, SBO 1:148. 35 SCC 4950. On this and Bernards skill for word-play, see Jean Leclercq, Sur le caractre litraire

des sermons de S. Bernard, Receuil dtudes sur saint Bernard et ses crits (Rome 1962) 163210. On the group of words, sapere, sapor, and sapientia in Bernards writings, see Casey, A Thirst for God (n. 15 above) 297298. For other instances of this word-play, see SCC 23.14, 67.6; Sent. 3.96.

36 Et forte sapientia a sapore denominatur. SCC 85.3, SBO 2:312. 37 Solus est Spiritus qui revelat:sine causa paginam consulis; experimentum magis require. Sapientia

est, cuius pretium nescit homo. De occultis trahitur, nec in terra suaviter viventium invenitur ista suavitas. Nimirum suavitas Dominus est:nisi gustaveris, non videbis. GUSTATE, inquit, ET VIDETE QUONIAM SUAVIS EST DOMINUS. Manna absconditum est, nomen novum est, quod nemo scit nisi qui accipit. Non illud eruditio, sed unctio docet, nec scientia, sed conscientia comprehendit. Conv. 13.25, SBO 4:99100. Trans. Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 63.

38 Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 63. Note that, additionally, in Sermon 50 on the Song, Bernard distinguishes between three kinds of affection (affectio):which the flesh begets, and one which reason controls, and one which wisdom seasons. Est affectio quam caro gignit, et est quam ratio regit, et est quam condit sapientia. SCC 50.4 in SBO 2:80. Trans. Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n.

184 ELLA JOHNSON The language of taste is effective, here, for Bernard, because it connotes immediate, mediated contact. When we taste something, we take something of its substance into our mouth and absorb it through the membranes of the epithelial cells in our tongues. Only, then, by this act of immediate contact with a substance other than ourselves are we able to distinguish the quality or essence of its substancee.g., if it is bitter or sweet.39 To be sure, Bernard, who is appropriately known as the mellifluous doctor,40 has a propensity to the kind of language of tasting and sweetness found in Augustines writing. Harking back to Augustines words, considered above, Bernard preaches that when wisdom (sapientia) is added to virtue, like some seasoning (condimentum), it adds taste (sapidam) to something which by itself is tasteless (insulsa) and bitter (aspera).41 But, whereas Augustine stresses the way Christ was made sweet in or-der to overcome the separation between God and humanity, and to liberate humanity in its bitterness, Bernard emphasizes the way the human person must make immedi-ate contact with God in order to be able to taste and to know (sapor, sapere) the sweetness of Wisdom (Sapientia).

I think it would be permissible to define wisdom (sapientia) as a taste for goodness (saporem boni). We lost this taste almost from the creation of our human race. When the old serpents poison (virus) infected the palate of our heart, because the fleshly sense prevailed, the soul began to lose its taste for goodness, and a noxious taste crept in When [however] wisdom enters, it makes the carnal sense taste flat; it purifies the understanding, cleanses and heals the palate of the heart (cordis palatum sanat et reparat). When the palate is healed (sano pa-lato), it then tastes the good; wisdom itself has a taste (sapit ipsa sapientia), and there is nothing better.42

Thus, taste, as Bernard writes it here, tells whether a soul is infected with the serpents poison, or whether it has been rebalanced and cleansedi.e., having made immediate contact with God so that it is capable of tasting that which is good. Here again the contrast between Bernards and Augustines language of taste is slight; nonetheless, it reveals something important about the difference in their epistemological theories. Augustine uses language of taste with a soteriological and Christological purpose. For

2 above) 62. Charity sets love in the proper, hierarchical order so that it banishes the first and rewards the second. But the third affection, wisdom, he says is far from either of them, because it tastes and experi-ences that the Lord is sweet. [Tertia ab utraque distat, quae et gustat, et sapit quoniam suavis est Dominus ] SCC 50.4, SBO 2:80. Trans. Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 6263. See also Fulton, Taste and See that the Lord is Sweet (n. 2 above) 191192.

39 On this notion in the medieval monastic milieu, see Fulton, Taste and See that the Lord is Sweet (n. 2 above) 170.

40 Bernard is rightly known as the mellifluous doctor, for he uses many words throughout his writing, like dulcis and suavis to speak of God. For example, he writes of the sweet name of Father, (SCC 15:2, SBO 1:83); the unimaginable sweetness of the Word, (SCC 85:13, SBO 2:316); and the sweetness of divine artistry (SCC 17.2, SBO 1:99).

41 sapientia virtuti accedens, quoddam veluti condimentum, sapidam reddat, quae per se insula quodammodo et aspera sentiebatur. Nec duxerim reprehendendum, si quis sapientiam saporem boni diffi-niat. SCC 85.3, SBO 2:312.

42 Nec duxerim reprehendendum, si quis sapientiam saporem boni diffiniat. Hunc saporem perdidimus, ab ipso pene exortu generis nostri. Ex quo cordis palatum, sensu carnis praevalente, infecit virus serpentis antiqui, coepit anima non sapere bonum, ac sapor noxius subintrare . Intrans sapientia, dum sensum carnis infatuat, purificat intellectum, cordis palatum sanat et reparat. Sano palato sapit iam bonum, sapit ipsa sapientia, qua in bonis nullum melius. SCC 85.8, SBO 2:312313. Trans., with slight emendations, Fulton, Taste and See that the Lord is Sweet (n. 2 above) 192193.

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him, the language conveys the notion that the Incarnation of Christ makes the incorporeal Logos accessible to embodied human beings. Yet, Bernard carries the bodily implications of taste further. His use of language of taste communicates how the person in life, in the experienced body, relates to God, in the here and now, in the pattern of Jesus Christ.

As Michael Casey points out, Bernard employs language of the lowly senses, of both taste and touch, partly because, as mediated senses, they allude to how God mani-fests Gods self in Christ in order to mediate between and lead corporeal humanity to the divine spirit.43 For instance, in reference to the sense of taste, Bernard writes: God took on flesh for those who know (sapientibus) the flesh, to teach them to taste and know (sapere) the Spirit.44 And, about the sense of touch, Bernard says that the kiss of the mouth (osculetur osculo oris) in Song 1.1a refers to the Word of God or mouth that assumed human corporeality when it kissed the flesh it took on. Christ is both divine and human, as a kiss is shared by both giver and receiver. So, Bernard uses the kiss of the Song of Songs to signify Christ the mediator, the Incarnate Son of God.45 Moreover, Bernard also associates the kiss of the mouth with the summit of human union with the divine spirit (unitas spiritus). The kiss of the mouth is en-joyed by a few fortunate people, such as St. Paul, when they are kissed by the Spirit, and participate in the Trinitarian kiss of Father and Son.46 As Bernard teaches, then, just as the Incarnation is a touch or a kiss, so is the immediate union between the hu-man person and God.47

Finally, when we turn to Gertrude, we find that she, like Augustine and Bernard, gives considerable attention to the theological appropriateness and implications of sensory language. In comparison to their analyses, Gertrudes solutions to these issues appear less systematicbut only on the surface. She writes in deceptively simple and traditional language, which suggests inventive ideas about the structure of the human person, physical sensation, and about the way to know and love God. Moreover, while accounting for her novel ideas, Gertrude both explicitly refers and implicitly alludes to the tradition of the spiritual senses available to her in the writings of those before her, especially Augustine and Bernard. Yet, Gertrude does not merely parrot her sources. As we will see in what follows, her writings not only engage with the established tradition, but they also move beyond it.

For Gertrude, corporeal and spiritual vision is a means of knowing and approaching union with God, and, reciprocally, the means by which one is transformed by God. Yet, because of their role in receiving the Eucharist, the senses of taste and touch are also privileged in Gertruds writing. In her visionary accounts in The Herald of Divine

43 Casey, A Thirst for God (n. 16 above) 297298. See also Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 3

above) 60; and SCC 71.10, where Bernard uses the language of adhering and embracing to describe the way divinity and humanity mutually inhere in Christ; SCC 68; Div 92.1.

44 Obtulit carnem sapientibus carnem, per quam discerent sapere et spiritum. SCC 6, SBO 1:27. 45 See SCC 67; Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 60. Song 1:1a also implies the ac-

tion of God as Trinity, for Bernard. The love between the Father and Son within the Trinity, he says, is the kiss of the Holy Spirit. SCC 8.8.

46 See SCC 8.8; Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation (n. 2 above) 6061. 47 See Div. 92.1; SCC 71.10.

186 ELLA JOHNSON Love, Gertrudes religious sisters report that she learns from Christ about how the hu-man person receives divine knowledge more immediately or directly by tasting the host, rather than by seeing it.

Another time, during the distribution of the sacrament, she strongly desired to see the host and was prevented from doing so by the crowds of those approaching the altar. She under-stood that the Lord was gently inviting her and saying, The sweet secret that concerns us must be unknown to those who are far from me. But youif it pleases you to knowdraw near and experience the taste of that hidden manna, not by seeing but by eating (accede et non videndo sed gustando experire quid sapiat illud absconditum manna).48

In this account, it seems that Gertrude wants to distinguish between tasting and seeing in a manner similar to Bernardthat she, too, wants to emphasize the immediate qual-ity of taste. She learns that she may come closer to the hidden manna (absconditum manna), in the here and now, not by seeing but by eating (non videndo sed gustando). This is because, for Gertrude, the physical sense of taste makes direct, immediate contact with the body of Christ in the consecrated host.

Indeed, in several places in her Spiritual Exercises, Gertrude follows Bernard by prioritizing taste over sight in the approach to God. And, her reasoning for doing so, like his, seems to be based on the immediate characteristic of taste. As we saw above, Bernard sometimes emphasizes the verb gustare, and omits the verb videre from Psalm 33.9 (gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Deus). Gertrude, too, emphasizes taste before sight, yet with a slightly different technique. In an intriguing passage from her Exercises, she quotes the alliterative combination of vacare et videre (be still and see) from Psalm 46.10, and then supplements it with the sense of gustare (taste) as given in Psalm 33.9 gustate et videte (taste and see). Without a doubt, Gertrude does so in order to place the immediate sense of taste before the more remote sense of sight, which she anaphorically exploits in the following lines.49

48 HGLK III 77. Alia vice, dum inter distributionem Sacramenti valde desideraret hostiam videre et inde a frequentia accedentium impediretur, intellexit Dominum blande se invitantem et dicentem: Suave secre-tum quod inter nos agitur, illis incognitum esse oportet qui se a me elongant. Sed tu, si scire delectaris, accede et non videndo sed gustando experire quid sapiat illud absconditum manna. Le Hraut, SC 143, 96. The historical context of this passage is important. As Caroline Walker Bynum points out, medieval Chris-tians were peculiarly prone to conflate the experience of receiving the Eucharistic host on their tongues with seeing, because tasting it physically did not really matter; eadem, Holy Feast and Holy Fast:The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley 1988) 6061. After the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decided that annual communion was both obligatory and sufficient for the laity, the majority of Christians received the Eucharistic host only once a year, at Easter, after their sins were absolved in confession. People feared being inadequately prepared for communion, and thus sacramental communion decreased and a variety of Eucharistic substitutes increased. Seeing the consecrated host, an ocular communion became a substitute for tasting or eating; Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Hampshire 2002) 141. In Gertrudes context, in the 13th c., the elevation of the host eventually assumed what Miri Rubin describes as sacramental efficacy and spiritual communion was regarded as beneficial; Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi:the Eucharist in late Medieval Culture (Cambridge 1991) 6364. However, theologi-ans, such as Alexander of Hales, frequently stressed that gazing on the host was, in itself, insufficient. On the tradition of ocular communion in the 13th c., see Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment 133164, esp. 140144. In the passage quoted above, wherein Gertrude makes an oblation during the elevation of the host, she is transformed by sight, rather than taste. We know, however, that the nuns at the monastery of Helfta re-ceived the host frequently, and Gertrude was eager to encourage those feeling unworthy to receive holy Communion. See Le Hraut 3.10, 3.18, 3.19. 3.36, 3.77. Gertrude, therefore, promotes the taste of the Eucharist over the sight of it.

49 SE 95 n. 18.

TO TASTE (SAPERE) WISDOM (SAPIENTIA) 187

Be at leisure (vaca) now; taste and see (gusta et vide) how dulcet and how remarkable is the spouse whom you have chosen above thousands./ See (Vide) what and how great is that glory for which you have condemned the world./ See (Vide) what the good is like for which you have waited./ See (Vide) what the homeland is like for which you have sighed./ See (Vide) what the prize is like for which you have labored./See (Vide) who your God is, what he is like and how great he is, whom you have cherished, whom you have adored and for whom you have always wished. 50

Following in Bernards footsteps again, in another place in her Exercises, Gertrude uses Psalm 33:9 to articulate how the mediated taste of union with God in this life precedes and anticipates something of the unmediated sight of God in the next life.51 Her prayer calls out to God in this way: O most lovable radiance, when will you sat-isfy me with yourself? If only I might here perceive the fine rays of your beauty for a little while and at least be permitted to anticipate your gentleness for a short time and sweetly beforehand to taste (praegustare) you, my best share.52 In these passages, Gertrudes language of sight communicates the idea that God is always to some extent remote from the human person in this life and beyond rational knowing, while her language of taste teaches that the Eucharist is an opportunity for the human person to make immediate contact with and know God in the here and now. For, in tasting God in the Eucharist, by the physical sense of taste, the human person immediately touches the body of God, and is able to enjoy an earthly taste or foretaste (praegustatio/ praegustare) of the heavenly sight of God.

Due to its immediacy, not only does Gertrude overtly claim that taste is prior to sight in the earthly approach to God, like Bernard, she sometimes breaks with the traditional sensory hierarchy by classifying taste, rather than sight, as the highest sense for knowing God in this life. As a matter of fact, Gertrudes discussion of sensation in the fifth of her seven Exercises inverts the traditional schema. It begins with the low-est, corporeal sense of sight and ascends up to the highest, corporeal senses of taste and touch, which perceive God here, in this life, along with their spiritual analogues; it then finally culminates with the summum bonum, the biblical seeing God face to face53 in the next life:

50 SE 9596. Vaca iam, gusta et vide, quam dulcis et quam spectabilis sit sponsus, quem prae millibus

elegisti. Vide quae et quanta sit gloria, pro qua mundum contempsisti. Vide quale bonum sit, quod expec-tasti. Vide qualis sit patria, ad quam suspirasti. Vide quale sit bravium, pro quo laborasti. Vide quis, qualis et quantus sit deus tuus, quem dilexisti, quem adorasti, quem semper optasti. Les Exercices 6.5865, SC 127, 204. In a request to God, in Exercise I, beginning with, make me taste (degustare) the sweetness (suavitatem) of your Spirit, Gertrude concludes, make me run to pastures of eternal life (vita aeternae) where I can be at leisure for eternity (aeternum) and see (videre) that you, my Lord, are truly sweet. SE 25 with adaptations. Fac me tui spiritus degustare suavitatem currere ad pascua vitae aeternae, quo possim in aeternum vacare et videre, quoniam tu vere suavis es, mi domine. Les Exercices 1.92, 102103, SC 127, 64, 66.

51 Gertrude also juxtaposes the faculties of sight and taste with the tool of synaestheia. In a few places Gertrude refers to the biblical sight of God with gustatory language, (e.g., Gods mellifluous face) see Les Exercices 1.7786; 5.267271; Le Hraut 3.30.102.

52 SE 7475. O amabilissima species, de te me quando saties? Utinam tuae venustatis tenues radios hic percipiam parumper, ut liceat mihi tuam dulcedinem saltem praelibare paulisper, et te partem meam op-timam praegustare suaviter. Les Exercices 5.4751, SC 127, 160. For other instances of the term fore-taste (praegustatio/ praegustare), see Les Exercices 5.345; 6.502.

53 SE in 8.

188 ELLA JOHNSON

When you are at leisure for love (for the kindling of your senses by the true sun, who is God, so that your love may never be extinguished but may grow from day to day) assiduously re-flect on one of these verses: Blessed the eyes that see you, O God, love. When, oh when may I come to that place where you are, God, true light, God and Lamb? I know that I will at last see you with my eyes, O Jesus, my saving God. Blessed are the ears that hear you, O God, love, Word of life. When, oh when will your voice full of mellifluous pleasantness console me, calling me to you? Ah! Let me not fear hearing evil, but let me quickly hear the glory of your voice. Amen. Blessed the nose that breathes you, O God, love, lifes most dulcet aroma. When, oh when will the fragrance of your mellifluous divinity breathe upon me? Ah! Let me come quickly to the fat and lovely pastures of sempiternal vision of you. Amen. Blessed the mouth that tastes, O God, love, the words of your consolation, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. When, oh when will my soul be filled again out of the cream of your divinity and become inebriated with your plentiful voluptuousness? Ah! Let me taste you thus here, my Lord, for you are sweet that there I may for eternity hap-pily and thoroughly enjoy you, O God of my life. Amen. Blessed the soul that clings inseparably to you in an embrace of love and blessed the heart that senses the kiss of your heart, O God, love, entering with you into a contract of friendship that cannot be dissolved. When, oh when will I be held tight in your blessed arms and behold you, O God, of my heart, without mediation? Ah! Quickly, quickly, let me, snatched from this exile, in jubilation see your mellifluous face! Amen.54

Gertrude charts out this via mystica, with its summit in taste and touch in this life, be-cause it is through these senses in Eucharistic communion that the human being makes immediate contact with God here. As Gertrude puts it: Ah! Let me taste (gustem) you thus here (hic), my Lord, for you are sweet that there (ibi) I may for eternity happily and thoroughly enjoy you, O God of my life. Amen.

Take note that Gertrude presents an innovative teaching in this verse. She says that the human person makes immediate physical contact and mediated spiritual contact with Christ, the Mediator between the here and there, in the consecrated host. She juxtaposes both the immediate and mediated characteristics of taste. For, she maintains that, in Eucharistic communion, as the physical sense of taste and touch directly con-

54 SE 9091, with adaptations. Translators emphasis. Per diem etiam illum quo vacaris amori, pro

accensione sensuum tuorum a vero sole qui deus est, ne unquam extinguaris, sed de die in diem crescas in amore:ruminabis assidue unum de his versibus:Beati oculi qui vident te, o amor Deus. O quando, quando illuc perveniam, ubi tu es deus verum lumen, deus et agnus? Scio quia tandem te videbo meis oculis, o Iesu deus salutaris meus. Beatae aures quae audiunt te, o amor deus, verbum vitae. O quando, quando vox tua plena melliflua suavitate consolabitur me, vocans me ad te? Eia ab auditione mala non timeam, sed cito audiam vocis tuae gloriam. Amen. Beatae nares quae aspirant te, o amor deus, dulcissimum vitae aroma. O quando, quando aspirabit mihi tuae mellifluae divinitatis fragrantia? Eia veniam cito ad tuae sempiternae visionis pinguia et amoena pascua. Amen. Beatum os quod gustat, o amor deus, tuae consolationis verba, super mel et favum dulciora. O quando, quando replebitur anima mea tuae divinitatis ex adipe, et inebria-bitur tuae voluptatis ubertate? Eia sic gustem hic, quoniam tu suavis es, domine mi, ut in aeternum feliciter te, o deus vitae meae, perfruar ibi. Amen. Beata anima, quae amplexu amoris inseparabilis adhaesit super te, et beatum cor, quod sentit tui cordis osculum, o amor deus, iniens tecum indissolubilis amicitiae foedus. O quando, quando tuis brachiis beatis stringar, et te, o deus cordis mei, sine medio aspiciam? Eia cito, cito erepta ab hoc exilio, faciem tuam mellifluam videam in iubilo. Amen. Les Exercices 5.464493, SC 127, 192, 194.

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tact the body of God in the consecrated host, concomitantly, the spiritual senses of taste and touch contact the divine nature of Christ, present there in heaven, but also here within and mediated by the communion wafer.

Gertrudes theory of concomitance is also evident in exercise I, in a prayer for re-ceiving communion of the life-giving body and the blood of the spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ. She instructs her readers to pray: O most dulcet guest of my soul, my Jesus very close to my heart, let your pleasant embodiment (incorporatio) be for me today/ eternal salvation,/ the healing of soul and body,/ and the enclosing (conclusio) of my life sempiternally in you.55 With the phrase, let your pleasant embodiment (incorporatio) be for me today, Gertrude again implies that the human person makes direct, immediate contact with the body of Christ in receiving the Eucharistic host. Yet, the tomorrow of eternal salvation is also found in the Eucharist, today, by way of Christs pleasant embodiment. The spiritual sense of taste allows for this opportunity by way of its contact with the divine nature of Christ, mediated by the consecrated host. That both the spiritual and physical senses of taste and touch operate concomitantly and make contact with Christ in Eucharistic union is further illustrated by Gertruds prayer: Let it be for me the healing of soul and body.

Indeed, Gertrudes reports in the Legatus tell that her spirit finds rest and that her body is sometimes restored to health after her Eucharistic communions.56 Still, other prayers, scattered throughout the Exercitia, instruct on the deification of the human person, in this life, by way of physical and spiritual taste. For instance: In tasting (degustatione) your pleasantness, I am alive.57 May the faithful God, the true Amen, who does not grow faint, make me thirst fervently for the dear Amen with which he himself affects [the soul]; taste (gustare) with pleasure the dulcet Amen with which he himself refreshes [the soul]; be consummated in happiness by that saving Amen with which he himself perfects [the soul].58 Based on her theology of the Eucharist and Incarnation, Gertrude thus believes that via the spiritual and physical taste of Christ, the Mediator, in the consecrated host, the human person may experience both the then and there in the here and now, and be renewed in purity of body and soul.

What I am suggesting here is that Gertrudes language of taste and touch reveals a theory that sets her apart from the sensory tradition that precedes her. For, in her gustatory images she puts forth a theory that, in the Liturgy, bodily sensation can and does cross the spaces and times that separate human and divine lives. This theory is operative and evident in her singular structure of sensation. In the tradition of the doc-trine of the spiritual senses, the spiritual and physical senses are generally viewed as

55 SE 2930. Pro susceptione communionis vivifici corporis et sanguinis agni immaculati Iesu Christi:

O animae meae hospes dulcissime, Iesu mi praecordialissime, tua suavis incorporatio sit mihi hodie aeterna salvatio, animae et corporis reparatio et vitae meae in te sempiterna conclusio. Les Exercices 1.178179, 189190, 193195, SC 127, 72, 74.

56 See Le Hraut 3.4; 3.5253. The theme of Eucharistic rest and restoration is found within other medieval women writers; see Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (n. 48 above) 151. This is why, I think, Gertrude so eagerly promotes frequent communion. See Le Hraut 3. 10; 3.1819, and esp. 3.36 and 3.77.

57 SE 70. In degustatione tuae suavitatis vivens ... Les Exercices 4.356357, SC 127, 150. 58 SE 32. Deus fidelis, amen verum, qui non deficit, faciat me ferventer sitire amen charum, quo ipse af-

ficit; suaviter gustare amen dulce, quo ipse reficit; feliciter consummari illo amen salutari, quo ipse perficit; ut in perpetuum efficaciter ... Les Exercices 1.234238, SC 127, 76, 78.

190 ELLA JOHNSON ordered in inverse relation to each other. The physical senses ascend from touch to sight, while the spiritual senses ascend from sight to touch. Yet, Gertrude pictures both the physical and spiritual senses as ascending from sight to touch. The physical senses have the same order as the traditional order on the spiritual senses. For Gertrude, what is true for the spiritual realm is true for the physical realm. Put differently, the spiritual order is the archetype for the physical order. This idea seems to be based on her belief that Eucharistic union with Christ, the Mediator, suspends the boundaries between space and time, humanity and divinity. For, when she explicitly ranks the senses, she refers to both the physical and spiritual analogues at once, as operating simultane-ously.

For example, in the following two passages, which explicitly rank the senses from sight to touch, Gertrude aligns the physical and spiritual analogues, presenting them as working in tandem. First, in exercise V, Gertrude writes a series of benedictions, which progress through both the physical and spiritual sensory faculties together in this order: from the eyes to the ears, then to the nose, and finally to the mouth.

Blessed the eyes that see you, O God, love Blessed are the ears that hear you, O God, love, Word of life ... Blessed the nose that breathes you, O God, love, lifes most dulcet aroma Blessed the mouth that tastes, O God, love, the words of your consolation, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb Blessed the soul that clings inseparably to you in an em-brace of love.59

In another instance, in her spiritual autobiography, in the Book II of the Legatus, Ger-trude reproduces this ranking of the physical and spiritual senses, from sight to hearing and smelling up to taste and touch. Again, she refers to both the physical and spiritual faculties at once, as acting in tandem. After receiving the Eucharist, one day, she exclaims:

What sights, what sounds, what scents, what delicious savors, what sensations! ... For even if the combined abilities of human beings and angels could be concentrated into a single mo-ment of worthy knowledge, it would not be adequate fully to express even a single word by which one could in the least degree aspire to the sublimity of such great excellence.60

Gertrude provides us with more clues about her unique sensory schema in the conclu-sion of her autobiography. Reflecting there on her own spiritual practice and on the artful composition of her book, she writes to God:

I long to praise you so that some people who read this account may take delight in the sweet-ness of your loving-kindness (dulcedine pietatis), and under this inducement may achieve personal experience (experiantur) in their inmost being of ampler graces, just as students sometimes come to the study of logic by way of the alphabet! In the same way, may they be

59 SE 9091. Beati oculi qui vident te, o amor Deus Beatae aures quae audiunt te, o amor deus, ver-

bum vitae Beatae nares quae aspirant te, o amor deus, dulcissimum vitae aroma Beatum os quod gustat, o amor deus, tuae consolationis verba, super mel et favum dulciora Beata anima, quae amplexu amoris inseparabilis adhaesit super te Les Exercices 5.468487, SC 127, 192, 194.

60 HGLK III, 123. O quid videt, quid audit, quid olfacit, quid gustat, quid sentit! ... cum etsi omnis angelica et humana possibilitas in unam dignitatis conferretur scientiam, ad plenum nequaquam formare sufficeret vel unicum verbum quo tantae excellentiae supereminentiam vel in minimo digne attingere posset. Le Hraut 2.8.5, SC 139, 268.

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led by these pictures (imaginationes), so to speak, that I have painted, to taste within them-selves that hidden manna (gustandum intra se manna illud absconditum) that cannot share any trace of material imagery (nulla corporearum imaginationum admixtione) grant that we may feed (pascere) on this manna to satiety throughout the journey of this exile, until with uncovered face we reflect the glory of the Lord, and are transformed from brightness to brightness.61

To sum up this passage: alphabet is to logic as corporeal images are to hidden manna as the Eucharist is to the summum bonum; via the alphabet students arrive at logic; via the pictures (imaginationes) that Gertrude has painted (depictas) her readers taste within themselves hidden manna (ducantur gustandum intra se manna illud absconditum); and via the Eucharist the human person is sustained and trained as they journey to their ultimate goal: to see and reflect the glory of God in heaven.62 So, herein, Gertrude again articulates the approach to God in this life as beginning in physical and spiritual sight and ending in physical and spiritual taste and touch. 63

The privilege Gertrude grants to taste and touch, as well as her belief in the concomitance of the spiritual and physical sense analogues and how they operate simultaneously, is further illustrated in the first of her Spiritual Exercises, which calls to mind the ceremony of Baptism. In this exercise, Gertrude speaks of the salt of wis-dom, thereby making a reference to the liturgical use of baptismal salt. While the former is perceptible to the spiritual taste, the latter is perceptible to corporeal taste. With this phrase, then, Gertrude refers to both the corporeal and spiritual senses of taste, at once, and implies that they function in tandem. She instructs:

At this point, you will pray that your mouth be filled with the salt of wisdom (sapientiae) that you may be able to savor the taste (sapere) of faith in the Holy Spirit. Most dulcet Jesus, let me receive from you the salt of wisdom and the spirit of understanding favorable to eter-nal life Make me taste (degustare) the pleasantness of your Spirit 64

61 HGLK 12, 172173. eo desidero te laudari, ut aliqui ista legentes in dulcedine pietatis tuae

delectentur, et inde tracti in intimis suis ampliora experiantur, sicut per alphabetum ad logicam perveniunt quandoque studentes, sic per istas velut depictas imaginationes ducantur ad gustandum intra se manna illud absconditum, quod nulla corporearum imaginationum admixtione valet partiri sufficienter pascere digneris per totam hujus exilii viam, quoad usque revelata facie gloriam Domini speculantes, in eamdem imaginem Domini transformemur a claritate in claritatem, tamquam a suavissimo spiritu tuo. Le Hraut 2.24.1, SC 139, 350, 352.

62 For a discussion of Gertruds analogical reasoning, see Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman:Volume II:the Early Humanist Reformation, 12501500 (Grand Rapids 2002) 340.

63 In his reading of the Legatus, Olivier Quenardel suggests that Gertrude takes for the basis as her struc-ture of sensation the order of Christian pedagogy and the order of the Eucharistic liturgy. In both cases, he says The wide embrace of the vision must go through the narrow embrace of the chewing, so that humans can see God as God wants to be seen. He argues that the logic of this sensory and apostolic pedagogy, not without any link with the mystagogy which has its summit in the eucharistic communion, opens onto an availability of humans for God, the ultimate goal of the pietas Dei:to make the whole Ecclesia, and each of her members, the Temple in which God delights. Olivier Quenardel, Saint Gertrude: Apostle of the Benefits of Eucharistic Communion, Conferences on Saint Gertrude of Helfta given at a Session of the Cistercian Monasticate (Abbey of Himmerod in September 2003), http://www.citeaux.net/quenardel/ anglais/conf-6.htm#titre. See also idem., La Communion Eucharistique dans Le Hraut de LAmour Divin de sainte Gertrude dHelfta:situation, acteurs et mise en scne de la divina pietas (Brepols 1997).

64 SE 25. Hic orabis, ut os tuum repleatur sale sapientiae, ut possis gustum fidei in spiritu sancto sa-pere:Accipiam a te, Iesu dulcissime, salem sapientiae et spiritum intelligentiae propitiatus in vitam aeternam Fac me tui spiritus degustare suavitatem. Les Exercices 1.8790, SC 127, 64.

192 ELLA JOHNSON Also, noteworthy about this passage is how, like Augustine and Bernard, Gertrude makes use of the etymological association of taste (sapere) and wisdom (sapientia). Yet, Gertrudes strategy of playing on sapere/sapientia moves beyond that of the men before her. Based on her theory of concomitance, she claims significant divine learn-ing occurs when she both physically and spiritually tastes the Eucharistic host.65 To God, she exclaims:

Hail, my salvation and the light of my soul! May all that is encompassed by the path of heaven, the circle of the earth and the deep abyss give you thanks for the extraordinary grace with which you led my soul to experience and ponder the innermost recesses of my heart You endowed me with a clearer light of knowledge of you I do not remember having ever enjoyed such fulfillment except on the days when you invited me to taste the delights of your royal table. Whether your wise providence ordered this, or my assiduous neglect brought it about, is not clear to me.66

Gertrude also places real emphasis here on the experience (experientia) of the taste of wisdom. She does this in Bernardine fashion, stressing that experienced wisdom is not seen, but tasted, since it consists of an immediate relation to God, who is beyond intellectual knowing.

Gertrude certainly agrees with Bernard that to touch or to taste God is not to know but to experience.67 But, Gertrude does not pull any punches when it comes to discussing the physical experience of God in her language of taste and touch. This is because she rests on her belief that Christ is made flesh in the Eucharist, and is thus perceptible to the corporeal as well as spiritual sense of taste. The way she highlights the particularly corporeal act of tasting and touching the body of God in the Eucharist is seen, for example, in her meditation on the great care one should guard the mouth, as it in particular among the other parts of the body is the receptacle of the precious mysteries of Christ.68 Gertrude even asks God, on another occasion: What glory does your divinity delight to gain from my chewing your spotless sacraments with my

65 As Caroline Bynum explains, when medieval mystics ... speak of tasting God... the verb itself is a

kind of bridge between the physical act of eating the host and the inner experience of resting in the sweet-ness (fruitio) of mystical union. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (n. 48 above) 151.

66 HGLK III 103104. Ave, salus mea et illuminatio animae meae, gratias tibi referat quidquid coeli ambitu, terrarum circuitu, profundoque abyssi complectitur, pro inusitata illa gratia qua introduxisti animam meam ad cognoscenda et consideranda interiora cordis mei Donabas enim me ex tunc clariore luce cognitionis tuae Sed tamen non recordor me fruitionem talium habuisse extra dies illos in quibus me ad delicias regalis mensae tuae vocabas. Et utrum hoc tua sapiens providentia ordinaverit, seu mea studiosa negligentia effecerit, non mihi liquido constat. Le Hraut 2.2.12, SC 139, 232, 234.

67 Gertrudes desires to teach othersboth by example and written instructionin the way of her experience of union with Christ in the school of love. In the Exercitia, she frequently employs the image the school of love (schola amoris and schola charitatis). See Les Exercices 2.5255; 5.311, 318, 365. This is an image that often directly refers to the Cistercian monastery; see Karl-Hubert Fischer, Zwischen Minne und Gott:die geistesgeschichtlichen Voraussetzungen des deutschen Minnesangs mit besonderer Bercksichtigung der Frmmigkeitsgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main 1985) 151. For more on Gertruds refer-ences to Christ as teacher and her new kind of learning see, Alexandra Barratt, Infancy and Education in the Writings of Gertrud the Great of Helfta, Magistra 6 (2000) 1730; Rebecca Stephens, The Word Translated:Incarnation and Carnality in Gertrud the Great, Magistra 7 (2001) 8384.

68 HGLK III 74. quanta diligentia os esset observandum, quod praecipue inter alia membra est receptaculum pretiosorum Christi mysteriorum Le Hraut 3.18.9, SC 143, 88.

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unworthy teeth?69 At another time, she considers her corporeal chewing of the host as breaking apart and feeding the Mystical Body of Christ. She prays that whenever at the reception of the sacrament the Lord would grant her as many souls from purga-tory as the number of parts into which the host was broken in her mouth.70 Such metaphors of bodily encounterconjuring up as they do mouths and teeth, flesh chewed and swallowed and made into new fleshreveal how much, to Gertrude, that the God who is infinite and beyond all rational knowing is also fleshly humanitya humanity that feeds and physically encounters the human person.

To be sure, Gertrudes rhetoric of touch and taste suggests that Eucharistic union with Christ entails mutual assimilation and interpenetration of humanity and God into one flesh. Listen, for example, to the way Gertrudes sisters describe her Eucharistic repose on Christs breast:

Another day when about to communicate she withdrew herself from it even more than usual because of her unworthiness. She implored the Lord to receive that holy Host on her behalf in his own persona and incorporate (incorporaret) it within himself and then breathe into her out of the noble respiration of his most delightful breath Thence when she had rested for awhile in the bosom of the Lord as it were beneath the shadow of his arms, in such a way that her left side seemed to lean against the blessed right side of the Lord, a little later she raised herself up and perceived that from the loving wound in the Lords most holy side she had contracted a pink (roseam) scar on her left side. After this when she was approaching to receive the body of Christ, the Lord seemed to receive that sacred host in him with his divine mouth. Passing through her inmost being it emerged from the wound in Christs most holy side and, like a dressing, fitted itself over that same life-giving wound. Then the Lord said to her, See how this host unites you to me in such a way that it covers up your scar from one side and my wound from the other, and becomes a dressing for both of us.71

In this account, Gertrude clearly understands the process of eating the Eucharist as mutual, involving both her and Christ. She asks Christ to incorporate (incorporaret) it [i.e., the host] with himself, and she understands that, when she was approaching to receive the body of Christ, the Lord seemed to receive that sacred host in him with his divine mouth. Furthermore, Gertrude recognizes that this mutual eating signifies assimilation. When God eats the host that she offers, Gertrude contracts a pink (roseam) scar on her left side from the wound of Christ. She is conformed to him.

69 HGLK III 77. Et quid, Domine, divinitas tua inde gloriae consequi delectatur, quod indignis dentibus

meis tua immaculata contero Sacramenta? Le Hraut 3.18.17, SC 143, 96. 70 HGLK III 8081. cum ad sumptum Sacramentum desideraret, ut sibi Dominus de Purgatorio tot

animas praestaret, in quot partibus hostia in ore ipsius divideretur, et inde conaretur illam in plures partes dividere. Le Hraut 3.18.26, SC 143, 102.

71 HGLK III 81. Alia quoque die communicatura, dum frequentiore sibi more propter indignitatem suam se subduceret, exorabat Dominum, quatenus ipse pro se Hostiam illam sacrosanctum in persona sua susciperet et sibimet incorporaret, ac deinde ex nobili spiramine suavissimi afflatus sui singulis horis tantum sibi aspiraret Hinc cum per moram in sinu Domini quasi sub umbra brachiorum ipsius requievisset, ita quod latus suum sinistrum benedicto lateri Domini dextro applicatum videretur, post modicum erigens se cognovit ex amatorio vulnere sanctissimi lateris Domini, se in sinistrum quasi roseam cicatricem contraxisse. Post hoc cum ad suscipiendum corpus Christi accederet, ipse Dominus videbatur ore suo deifico in se suscipere Hostiam illam sacrosanctam, quae pertransiens intima illius de vulnere lateris Christi sanctissimi progrediebatur et quasi emplastrum super idem vivificum vulnus se coaptavit. Unde Dominus ait ad eam: Ecce Hostia haec te mihi conjunget eo modo, quod ex una parte contegat cicatricem tuam, et ex alia parte vulnus meum, utrisque nobis factum emplastrum. Le Hraut 3.18.27, SC 143, 104.

194 ELLA JOHNSON Yet, Gertrudes communion affects Christ as well. The host covers up his wound, just as it covers up her scar; indeed, it dresses their two shared wounds at once.

By suggesting such mutual assimilation, Gertrudes language of taste and touch moves beyond even the most body-affirming aspects of Augustines and Bernards language. As I pointed out above, Bernard frequently qualifies his language of eating, tasting and touching, so as not to imply divine-human union without difference. Ger-trude, however, is concerned to draw attention to the possibility of the human persons intermingling with, or even transformation into, Christs human and divine substances or natures that is possible in Eucharistic communion. She says, for instance, that once, after receiving the host, she saw her

soul cradling him [i.e., Jesus as a tender little body] within itself it suddenly seemed to be completely changed into the same color as himif that can be called a color, which cannot be compared with any visible quality. Then my soul perceived a meaning that defies explica-tion in the sweet words, God shall be all in all (Heb. 1.3). It felt that it held within itself the Beloved, installed in the heart, and it rejoiced that it was not without the welcome presence of its Spouse, with his most enjoyable caresses. Offered the honeyed draughts of the follow-ing divinely inspired words, it drank them in with a thirst that could not be satisfied: Just as I bear the stamp of the substance of God the Father (Heb. 1.3) in regard to my divine nature, so you bear the stamp of my substance in regard to my human nature, for you receive in your deified soul the outpourings of my divine nature, just as the air receives the suns rays. Pene-trated to the very marrow by this unifying force, you become fit for a more intimate union with me.72

Certainly, when Bernard speaks of leaning on the wounded side of Christ, he does not stress assimilation of the human and the divine as Gertrude does; rather he speaks of a particularly intimate amplexus, a mutual touching. For example, in his Sermon 51.5 on the Song, Bernard evokes the biblical image of John leaning on Jesuss breast at the Last Supper, and says: Happy is the soul who reclines on the breast of Christ and rests between the arms of the Word. 73 Such tactile imagery, in Bernards writing, operates as an allegory of union between the soul and the Word. He avoids the carnal implications of the imagery. As Caroline Walker Bynum notes, among twelfth-century Cistercians, like Bernard, the heartwhich is already the sweetness John tasted on Jesuss breast and the cleft in the rocks where the Apostle hidesis primarily Gods love. Although feeding imagery and images of refuge surround it, it is not explicitly a symbol of the Eucharist By Gertrudes day devotion to the sacred heart is an explicitly Eucharistic devotion.74

72 HGLK III 117. Quem cum intra se teneret anima mea, repente tota mutata videbatur cum ipso in eumdem colorem, si tamen color dici possit quod nulli visibli speciei valet comparari. Hinc percepit anima mea intellectum quemdam ineffabilem verborum illorum suavifluorum:Erit Deus omnia in omnibus, cum dilectum praecordiis suis immissum se continere sentiret et cum jucundissimae blandidatis sponsi gratam praesentiam sibi non deesse guaderet. Unde mellita pocula talium verborum divinitus propinata insatiabili aviditate imbibebat: Sicut ego sum figura substantiae Dei Patris in divinitate, sic tu eris figura substantiae meae ex parte humanitatis, suscipiens in tuam deificatam animam emissiones meae divinitatis, sicut aer suscipit solares radios; qui unitivo medullitus penetrata habilitaris ad familiariorem mei unionem. Le Hraut 2.6.2, SC 139, 258.

73 Felix anima quae in Christi recumbit pectore, et inter Verbi brachia requiescit! SCC 51.5.5 in SBO 2:87.

74 Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berke-ley 1982) 192193. As Laura Grimes, Theology as Conversation:Gertrude of Helfta and her Sisters as

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Indeed, Gertrude exploits the tactile implications of Eucharistic devotion. Instead of mutual touching, she expresses this kind of union in terms of mutual intimacy (mutuae familiaritatis) and exchange. She reports that her most treasured Eucharistic experiences include Gods wounding of her heart and the exchange of hearts with Christ:

Among all these pleasures I have two favorites: that you imprinted on my heart the brilliant necklace of your most saving wounds; and that you fixed the wound of love so plainly and so effectually in my heart You also bestowed on me the added intimacy of your priceless friendship, by offering in many different ways that most noble ark of godhead, your deified Heart, to increase all my delights, sometimes giving it freely, sometimes as a great sign of our mutual intimacy (mutuae familiaritatis), exchanging it for mine.75

Thus, even more than Bernard, Gertrude stresses that the human person is integrated equally in soul and body; both parts of the human person, then, can be simultaneously united to God, even in this life. According to her, the human person can achieve an immediate relation to God in the here and now, in body and soul, especially in Eucharistic communion. The corporeal senses of taste and touch in the Eucharist are the gateway to union with God in the soul.

Even in the liturgical context in which his visions and auditions occur, Bernard uses taste to refer to the sweetness of the spiritual taste of true doctrine in the scrip-tures, the living bread and the hidden manna, instead of the corporeal taste of the Eucharistic host in the liturgy; he places emphasis on Christ, the Incarnate Word made

Readers of Augustine (Ph.D. diss., Notre Dame 2004) 118119, has made clear, Gertrude was also work-ing with the Augustinian notion of heart, the mens in its highest act by which intellect and affect com-bine in the act of caritas. For instance, in the Legatus, Gertrude relates to God: Suddenly you were there unexpectedly, opening a wound in my heart [infigens vulnus cordis meo] with these words, May all your affections [affectionum tuarum] come together in this place; that is may the sum total of your delight, hope, joy, sorrow, fear and your other affections [caeterumque affectionum tuarum] be fixed firmly in my love [stabiliantur in amore meo]. HGLK III 113. [Sed nec sic quidem satisfactum est desiderio meo usque in feriam quartam dum post Missam a fidelibus recolitur tuae adorandae Incarnationis et Annuntiationis digna-tio; cui et ego quamvis minus digne intendebam; et ecce tu aderas velut ex improviso infigens vulnus cordi meo cum his verbis: Hic confluat tumor omnium affectionum tuarum verbi gratia:summa delectationis, spei, gaudii, doloris, timoris, caeterarumque affectionum tuarum stabiliantur in amore meo.] Le Hraut 2.5.2 in SC 139, 250. At first blush, this understanding of heart does not seem to reveal the physical kind of union with God that I am arguing for. However, Gertrudes union with Christ, as this passage relates it, occurs in a Eucharistic and communal context. Along with her sisters, after Mass, Gertrude is taking part in a devotion that honors the Incarnation. The context, as Grimes notes, emphasizes the ongoing incarnation of Christ in his mystical body, the community of Christians, in which Gertrude is a corporate member, and through which she receives Christs mercy and grace. Thus, the union of her heart with Christs is body dependant.

75 HGLK III 165166. Inter quae et illa duo specialius praefero, quod scilicet impressisti cordi meo saluberrimorum vulnerum tuorum praeclara monilia, et ad hoc vulnus amoris tam evidenter et etiam effica-citer cordi meo infixisti Addidisti etiam inter haec mihi inaestimabilem amicitiae familiaritatem im-pendere, diversis modis illam nobilissimam arcam divinitatis, scilicet deificatum Cor tuum praebendo in copiam omnium delectationum mearum; nunc gratis dando, nunc ad majus indicium mutuae familiaritatis illud mihi pro meo commutando. Le Hraut 2.23.78, SC 139, 336, 338; Le Hraut 2.68. For more on Gertruds devotion to the wounds of Christ, see Rosalyn Voaden, All Girls Together: Community, Gender, and Vision at Helfta, Medieval Women and Their Communities, ed. Dianne Watt (Toronto 1997) 7291. For more on the comparison between Gertrudes and Bernards devotions to Christs wounds, see Sheryl Frances Chen, Bernards Prayer Before the Crucifix that Embraced Him: Cistercians and Devotion to the Wounds of Christ, Cistercian Studies Quarterly 29 (1994) 4751.

196 ELLA JOHNSON flesh in the Scriptures, rather than Christ made flesh in the Eucharistic Host. Undenia-bly, at times, Gertrudes language corresponds with Bernards kind of rhetoric. For, she says that the words of the Bible are honeyed and honey-sweet (super mel et favum).76 Moreover, she suggests that the words she writes, because they are so based in Scripture, are sweeter than the honeycomb (favo mellis dulciores) (Ps. 18.11).77 Yet, Gertrude goes farther than Bernard when she associates the sweetness of her words with the sweetness of the Eucharist. For instance, she reports that Christ tells her the following about her Legatus: I have pressed this book of mine on the inner-most parts of my divine breast for this reason, that by it I may penetrate every letter written in it thoroughly with the sweetness of my divinity, as the sweetest mead com-pletely penetrates a grain of new wheat. 78 Indeed, in the same report from the Legatus, we are told that once the manuscript had been completed, one of Helfta nuns hid the work in the sleeve of her habit when she communicated, and the book received the same benediction that effectively transubstantiates bread and wine for the salvation of all.79 As Ann Astell argues, Whereas Bernard eats the sacred scriptures as if they were Eucharist, Gertrude reads the Eucharist as if it were text.80

Taste and touch are certainly central metaphors in Gertrudes writings, not merely because the Eucharist is the place in Christian ritual in which God is most intimately received, but also because taste and touch express the way the human person makes immediate physical contact and mediated spiritual contact with Christ, the Mediator between the here and there, in the consecrated host. According t