The Life of St Mechtilidis

The materials for the following Life have been taken from the only possible source i. e. the Revelations of St. Mechtildis and of St. Gertrude. The Edition principally used has been that published at Solemes in 1875 with its valuable prefaces and appendix. These last have been freely consulted and used. The Editor does not seenl to have known of the Edition of St. Mechtildis Revelations published at Cracow in 1639. the question as to whether St. Mechtildis may have been the Matilda of Dante has not been gone into as it would require special study and more research than can be given at present. The names of Mechtildis and Gertrude stand out in the monastic history of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries almost as solitary figures on the glorious back ground of the Rule which for already eight centuries had peopled the Church of God with saints. Most, (if not all) of the great writers of Benedictine lives have stopped short in their annals about that time, for indeed it, as more than one life's work to go further, and so it happens that many great saints arc either forgotten or but little known, even in the very places where they lived. Then follows a consideration of the contemporaries of Saint Mechtildis also known as Mechtild. The life that St. Mechtildis had undertaken was in all its principal points the life led in every Benedictine monastery, in which the Rule is always the same, with the differences consequent upon the fundamental idea of a family. With no more appropriate or more beautiful words can we end this life of St. Mechtilc1is than in those of the Holy Ghost which epitomise the dealings of God with that chosen soul; "Her have I loved, and have sought out fro m my youth, and have desired to take for my spouse, and I became a lover of her beauty. She glorifieth her nobility by being conversant with God: yea, and the Lord of all things hath loved her. For it is she that teacheth the knowledge of God, and is the chooser of His works."