Mechthild of Hackeborn: The Book of Special Grace

The Classics of Western Spirituality

by Mechtilde of Hackeborn, Barbara Newman (Translator), Richard Kieckhefer (Foreword)

Introduces an English translation of the Book of Special Grace, a Latin mystical work composed by Mechthild of Hackeborn and her sisters at the convent of Helfta in the 1290s.

Genres: Religion, Theology

312 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 5, 2017

About the author

Benedictine; born in 1240 or 1241 at the ancestral castle of Helfta, near Eisleben, Saxony; died in the monastery of Helfta, 19 November, 1298. She belonged to one of the noblest and most powerful Thuringian families, while her sister was the saintly and illustrious Abbess Gertrude von Hackeborn. Some writers have considered that Mechtilde von Hackeborn and Mechtilde von Wippra were two distinct persons, but, as the Barons of Hackeborn were also Lords of Wippra, it was customary for members of that family to take their name indifferently from either, or both of these estates. So fragile was she at birth, that the attendants, fearing she might die unbaptized, hurried her off to the priest who was just then preparing to say Mass. He was a man of great sanctity, and after baptizing the child, uttered these prophetic words: "What do you fear? This child most certainly will not die, but she will become a saintly religious in whom God will work many wonders, and she will end her days in a good old age." When she was seven years old, having been taken by her mother on a visit to her elder sister Gertrude, then a nun in the monastery of Rodardsdorf, she became so enamoured of the cloister that her pious parents yielded to her entreaties and, acknowledging the workings of grace, allowed her to enter the alumnate.

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[Ella]

Read for Hilary Term Secondary Tutorial: The Helfta Mystics