Gertrud of Helfta, also the Great (ca. 1256-1301), was a nun at the medieval Saxon convent of Helfta (founded in 1229), which began as a Cistercian house though it was never fully integrated into the order. Gertrud stands at the center of the hagiographic compendium known as the Legatus divinæ pietatis (The Herald of God’s Loving-Kindness); the medieval vita and visions of Gertrud, which partly go back to Gertrud’s authorship, are collected here. Only Book 2 of the Legatus seems to have been written by Gertrud of Helfta herself while the other four books were written by a “close confidante,” known in scholarship as “Sister N.” (xiii). The Legatus is mainly transmitted in fifteenth-century manuscripts but a newly discovered codex (Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, Ms 827) dates to the first quarter of the fourteenth century. [1] The special Legatus transmitted in this manuscript, also known as the Leipzig Legatus, offering hitherto unknown material, calls for new research on the status and content of one of the most intriguing visionary texts of medieval mysticism. For this and other purposes, Alexandra Barratt’s accomplishment of translating the entirety of the now so-called standard Legatus into modern English--the current fifth volume being the Legatus’ final volume--is indispensable and means that students, teachers, researchers, and general readers alike will profit from diving into the world of a late-thirteenth-century mystical visionary.

Helfta in the thirteenth century was a unique center of mystical theology practiced and recorded by women. Alongside Gertrud of Helfta, two slightly older mystics, Mechthild of Hackeborn and Mechthild of Magdeburg, were equally active under the convent’s abbess Gertrud of Hackeborn. Mechthild of Hackeborn’s visions are gathered in the Liber specialis gratiæ (The Book of Special Grace) which, like the Legatus, was written in Latin and the outcome of a collective writing project. [2] It was only recently, in 2017, translated into modern English by Barbara Newman. [3] The Middle High German version of Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (The Flowing Light of the Godhead) has also already been translated. [4] Hence, the translation of Gertrud’sLegatus enables not only a full access to contemporary Anglophone readers, it also makes easy comparison to the two Mechthilds possible, and encourages more translation and research activity in this domain.

So far, two scholarly editions of the Latin Legatus exist; Louis Paquelin edited it alongside the Liber (1875) and more recently the Brothers of Solesmes edited it with a synoptic French translation in the bilingual series Sources Chrétiennes (1968-1986). Barratt’s translation is based on this latter edition, which in turn mainly goes back to two comprehensive manuscripts, that is, manuscripts that contain all five books of the Legatus: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 15332 and Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 4224. Although in the meantime, since the 1960s to 80s when editors Pierre Doyère, Jean-Marie Clément, and Bernard de Vregille published the Legatus, many more text witnesses have emerged, most of which contain the Legatus only partially or, as in the Leipzig case, with major differences, the choice to use the Sources Chrétiennes edition is sound since it remains the most important scholarly text source for the Latin Legatus.

Barratt’s translation of Legatus 5, published in 2020, consists of three parts. First, an introduction gives a solid overview of the content of Legatus 5 and prepares the reader for navigation through the ensuing text; then follows the translation of Legatus 5 itself, containing all thirty-six chapters and augmented by “the mass personally sung in Heaven by the Lord Jesus for a certain virgin called Trutta while she was still alive” (157-168), the so-called Gertrud-Messe which is transmitted in several Legatus manuscripts; finally, there is some bonus material with a translation of Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Liber Parts 6 and 7.

The introduction is extremely helpful as an entryway into the Legatus. Instead of assuming much prior knowledge from her readers, Barratt goes the extra mile to lead into the main text by delivering important information about its historical and theological context. After a brief overview of Gertrud’s life, childhood, and education at Helfta, Barratt examines the structure of Legatus 5 and divides it into two parts. According to this division, the first part, comprising chapters one to twenty-two, presents exemplary descriptions of various people associated with the monastery--among others abbess Gertrud of Hackeborn and other, unnamed, nuns, novices, and lay-brothers--focusing on their suffering and path to salvation. Barratt detects here a “downward movement from Gertrud, the ideal abbess and bride of Christ, to those who must suffer the heaviest purgatorial pains” (xix). The second part, chapters twenty-three to thirty-five, deals with Gertrud’s thoughts about, and preparation for, her own death, and it also presents strategies for how the text seeks divine authorization. Next to the context and the structure of Legatus 5, Barratt discusses Gertrud’s beliefs on the subjects of death and purgatory. However, Gertrud has not much to say about purgatory; rather, her idea of it remains vague as purgatory appears to be a general condition of the soul in need of purification.

The translation of Legatus 5 follows the Latin edition in its structure and arrangement of chapters. Taking over the chapter headlines from the Latin original, Barratt helps the reader by completing the names of people such as convent members who in the Latin text are abbreviated only with their initials but who are identifiable. This concerns both Mechthilds, Gertrud the abbess, a named monk, and the convent founder Count Burchard (of Mansfeld). In this case of editorial intervention, short footnotes provide additional information about the people in question. More guidance for the reader is supplied by highlighting direct quotations from the Scriptures in the main text in italics and adding the specific textual reference to the biblical book in question in the margins. These references are also indexed by Legatus chapter and paragraph at the end of the volume, thus facilitating studies on biblical allusions and implicitly showcasing the firm knowledge of Scriptures that the Helfta authors had. Other intertextual references, such as those to the Church Fathers, are given in footnotes. The footnotes are also used to offer editorial information as well as liturgical and historical background.

The first lines of the so-called oblatio, that is the offering during the Eucharistic service, contained in Chapter 35 of Legatus 5, may serve as an example of Barratt’s formidable translation. The Latin reads:

Effluxum hunc nectareum tuae gratuitae pietatis, quem ex intimis tui amorosi Cordis produxit efficax dulcor tuae investigabilis divinitatis, ad influendum, irrigandum, fecundandum et beatificandum tibique intrahendum ac indissolubiliter conglutinandum cor et animam electae tuae, Christe Jesu, fontale lumen sempiternorum luminum, offero tibi ex affectu totius universitatis, in unione illius excellentissimae caritatis qua tu, altissimi Patris Unigenitus, omnem influxum divinitatis in tuam deificatam humanitatem cum plena gratitudine direxisti in abyssum originis suae... [5]

Barratt translates this into modern English as follows:

I offer you, Christ Jesu, primal light of eternal lights, this nectar- sweet torrent of your generous loving-kindness that the powerful sweetness of your unsearchable divine nature has brought forth from the depths of your loving heart to inundate, water, fertilize, and bless the heart and soul of your chosen, to draw her and bind her indissolubly to yourself. I do this in union with that most excellent charity by which you, the Only-Begotten of the highest Father, diverted back to the abyss of its origin with abundant thanksgiving all that had flowed from your divine nature into your deified human nature. (153)

Despite the complex Latin prose, Barratt manages to rearrange and shorten some phrases, adapting them to the English syntax, especially by shifting the salutation to Christ to the beginning of the sentence. Dividing the long Latin structure into two English sentences, she renders it more reader-friendly for a modern audience. Barratt maintains rhetorical and stylistic devices; for example, the alliteration of divinitatis and deificatam is translated with divine and deified--two terms that are, however, derived from the Latin anyway. She also keeps and adapts superlatives, preserving the hyperbolic register of the Latin original. As this demonstrates, Barratt’s translation is both close to the text by adapting the literary style into contemporary language, and readable for an English-speaking audience by breaking down some long sentences without modifying their essential meaning. This double-pronged character--proximity to the original while adapting it to today’s reader--is what makes Barratt’s translation so attractive for further research as well as for university teaching, not to speak of general readership.

The third part of the current book contains a translation of Liber Parts 6 and 7, associated with Mechthild of Hackeborn, which differs only slightly from Newman’s translation that is equallybased on Paquelin’s edition in Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae vol. II. At first sight, the reader may ask, why did Barratt translate parts of the Liber to accompany her translation of the Legatus? Upon studying these parts in comparison with Legatus 5, it becomes evident that the selected Liberportions have much in common with the beginning of Legatus 5. The early chapters of Legatus 5, as Barratt emphasizes in her introduction (xxv), are preoccupied with Mechthild and Gertrud of Hackeborn: Legatus 5,1 and Liber 6 are both concerned with Gertrud of Hackeborn’s final passage of life; and Legatus 5,4 as well as Liber 7 deal with the late Mechthild of Hackeborn. However, Liber6 contains much that is not found in the Legatus, especially Mechthild’s prayers for her biological sister Gertrud of Hackeborn after the latter’s death. Nonetheless, about two-thirds of the report on Gertrud of Hackeborn in the Legatus and the Liber resembleone another. For example, the opening of Liber 6, as Barratt demonstrates in her introduction (xxvi), merges phrases that also appear in the Legatus: “Lady Gertrud, our abbess of sweetest memory, glorious and truly brilliant light of our church, who blossomed like a rose in all the virtues” (171) correlates with the title of Legatus 5,1: “The glorious death of the reverend Lady G<ertrud>, abbess, of sweetest memory”(5); “in these and various other, or, rather, all virtues she blossomed like a rose all her life” (6, commonalities highlighted in bold). Another example for the overlap between the Legatus and the Liber can be seen when comparing Liber 7 with Legatus 5,4. Both passages in question deal with Mechthild’s sickness and death, and in some places match up almost verbatim. The Legatus reads:

“The next day, during the first Mass, that is, ‘Rest eternal,’ God’s chosen one appeared, putting forth as it were golden pipes from the heart of God for all those who had a special devotion to her, through which they could draw whatever they desired from the divine heart.” (50)

In comparison, the Liber has:

“The next day, during Mass, that is ‘Rest eternal,’ this woman’s soul appeared, putting forth golden pipes from the heart of God for all those who had a special devotion to or love for her; through these pipes they could draw whatever they desired from the divine heart.” (237)

The cited passages show not only that the content overlaps but that the Liber and the Legatus in fact share the very same text material. In this specific case, Barratt suggests that the Liber parts were written by the aforementioned Sister N. together with Gertrud of Helfta, and that they were “later adapted” by Sister N. for the final book of the Legatus (xxx). Positioning these texts side by side enables scholars to compare them directly and see what Racha Kirakosian has called the “multidimensional collective writing culture” at Helfta. [6]

Volume 5 of Barratt’s Herald of God’s Loving-Kindness goes, like its predecessors, beyond a simple word-by-word translation of the Latin Legatus. Barratt provides her readers with valuable and important information; she engages with research questions and does not shy away from taking bold decisions in terms of interpreting, combining, and presenting the text material. In this way, Barratt has delivered a timely and accessible version of the Legatus, which allows insights into its production more than seven hundred years ago.

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Notes:

1. Balázs J. Nemes and Almuth Märker, “‘Hunc tercium conscripsi cum maximo labore occultandi’: Schwester N von Helfta und ihre ‘Sonderausgabe’ des ‘Legatus divinae pietatis’ Gertruds von Helfta in der Leipziger Handschrift Ms 827,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 137 (2015): 248-296.

2. On Helfta’s collective scriptorium, see Racha Kirakosian, From the Material to the Mystical in Late Medieval Piety: The Vernacular Transmission of Gertrude of Helfta’s Visions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), especially pp. 12-32.

3. Barbara Newman, trans., Mechthild of Hackeborn: The Book of Special Grace (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2017).

4. Frank Tobin, trans., Mechthild of Magdeburg: The Flowing Light of the Godhead (New York: Paulist Press, 1998). Selections have also been translated by Elizabeth A. Andersen, trans.,Mechthild of Magdeburg: Selections from The Flowing Light of the Godhead (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003).

5. Gertrude d’Helfta, Oeuvres spirituelles, vol. 5: Le Héraut, edited and translated by Jean-Marie Clément et al., Sources chrétiennes 331 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1986), pp. 268-270.

6. Kirakosian, From the Material to the Mystical, p. 212.