The remarkable collection of visions collected originally under the title Visiones cuiusdam virginis (Visions of a certain virgin), which was changed in a critical modern edition by Peter Dinzelbacher and Renate Vogeler to Leben und Offenbarungen der Wiener Begine Agnes Blannbekin († 1315) (Life and Revelations of the Viennese Beguine Agnes Blannbekin [† 1315]), deserves scholarly attention for several reasons. First, it offers a rare window into the medieval lives of Austrian women religious which are accessible to us today. Besides Agnes Blannbekin’s biography, knowledge about the Austrian incluse Wilbirg (d. 1289) survived in a vita by her confessor Einwik (d. 1313) and offers a contemporaneous comparison of the two male scribes’ approaches to writing about religious women. Further, the case of the widowed author Frau Ava (d. 1127), renowned as a religious poet and the first named female author writing in German, offers insights into Austrian women’s theological education in the medieval period. However, the three best-known religious women’s geospatial range could not have been more diametrical. While Frau Ava and Wilbirg lived a life of monastic enclosure (Wilbirg, however, undertook a pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela), Agnes Blannbekin enjoyed a secular woman’s range of mobility in an urban setting as a dedicated lay religious, possibly a Beguine. Most medieval women’s religious writings were generated in aristocratic contexts. By contrast, Agnes Blannbekin’s social background was agrarian and rural before she moved to Vienna’s urban setting. Thirdly, Visiones cuiusdam virginis brims over with detailed descriptions of medieval daily life, which serve as the mise-en-scène for religious experiences, theological reflections, and explanations of the supernatural. Quotidian town life also provides the corporeal grammar that figures so prominently in the text. The sacred communicates and is communicable in and through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Baked goods, boiled eggs, herbal salves, and farm animals rival church altars and Eucharistic wafers as religious meaning-makers.
It is in this unusual framework that the Visiones cuiusdam virginis serve as the author’s springboard to contribute to the growing field of olfactory cultural studies. Mapping and analysing textual evidence of olfactory sensations and their interpretation, Seeberger’s case study of the Visiones travels far and wide to review current theories of olfactory factors in social and ritual communication, their history, their contributions to a definition of the study of senses generally, and their theological and philosophical predecessors from Aristotle to Karl Marx.
Seeberger’s central thesis is that Agnes Blannbekin in particular experienced the olfactory sense as a mystical means of female self-authorization and gendered boundary transgression (Entgrenzung). I suggest that as such, Blannbekin’s highly individualistic scent perceptions and their interpretations, a small but significant aspect of her mystical perceptual palette, complement my own characterization of Blannbekin’s geospatial religious mobility in urban Vienna as an unusually self-confident “street mystic.” One can only speculate whether her upbringing in an Austrian rural setting taught Blannbekin greater confidence in her personal ability to navigate spatially--whether in terms of conceptual or literal (architectural) landscapes of the sacred--than a lay religious woman raised in urban confines. Be that as it may, Blannbekin’s repeated spatial usurpation of church altars through ritualized physical contact and visions pose a gendered challenge to this preeminent androcentric sacred space to this day (see also Seeberger’s discussion of this topic, 232-36).
To make her case, Seeberger builds her argument carefully and with great attention to detail. Chapter One presents a brief review of Visiones cuiusdam virginis scholarship and the history and current state of the field of olfactory cultural studies. Chapter Two offers a nuanced analysis and comparison of all currently known manuscripts. In and of itself, this chapter alone will prove eminently helpful to future Blannbekin scholars. Chapter Three delves into the identity of Blannbekin’s confessor scribe as a member of the Franciscan order and the mutually dependent and enriching nature of his relationship with Blannbekin, which Seeberger characterizes as one of “interwoven communication” (205-209). On the foundation of the first three chapters, Seeberger elects three olfactory and one gustatory example to argue for Blannbekin’s chemosensory system’s transgressive function: the fragrance of freshly baked rolls; the acrid malodor of burnt objects; the aroma and taste of Eucharistic wafers; and the distinct scent of individual Franciscan monks. In these cases, all of which are examined by the author in remarkable detail, chemosensory experiences, when transferred to the realm of visionary revelation, buttress and legitimize Blannbekin’s transgressive female authority in her Franciscan life world. The author’s review of olfactory imagery and experiences in the writings of Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) and Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. 1282/1294) reveals that even when compared with the texts composed by other female visionaries, the use of olfactory images and sensations as recorded in the Visiones cuiusdam virginis stands out as unique and idiosyncratic. Seeberger’s study concludes with a succinct summary of her argument, an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and a tripartite index.
Olfaktorik und Entgrenzung constitutes a significant and engaging benchmark in Blannbekin studies. It demonstrates persuasively why the Visiones cuiusdam virginis deserve ongoing scholarly attention with the use of innovative methodologies and fresh research questions; how it deepens our understanding of embodied spirituality in new and surprising ways; and specifically, that at least in early fourteenth-century Vienna, seemingly intransigent androcentric gender norms could be toppled by something as simple and delicious as the smell of a freshly baked roll.