Il femminile nell’estasi

1. Given the Christian figure of god, as the Latin Middle Ages understood it, ecstasy is the moment when the divine participates itself in the created person, the supernatural participates in nature. In the Christian tradition, this action is justified and made possible by divine love for creation, which therefore in ecstasy cannot be destroyed. The feminine is a dimension of creation that in the ecstasy persists: what happens in this permanence? 2. Presenting mainly the Vita of Atumoda of Agio of Corvey (for the early Middle Ages) and some texts of mystic women related to the teaching of Francis of Assisi (for the late Middle Ages), the article demonstrates how by persisting in ecstasy the dimension of the feminine becomes a possibility for seeing ever new aspects of the divine figure. 3. Approaching the feminine to the dimension of motherhood, it can be seen that in the case of Atumoda’s experience, the moment of intimacy with god is the moment when the monastic dimension of virginity no longer proves to her to be sufficient for perfection. Atumoda needs now to feel that she is the mother of her sisters, fruit de propriis visceribus: she discovers the perfection of the person (that god’s presence arouses) in the union of virginity and motherhood, which has an example in Mary, mother of god. 4. In the case of the mystic women following Francis’ experience, the god who offers himself to the ecstatic still urges his identification with Mary as mother, but at moment when Mary experiences her greatest love, as a mother witnessing the death of her son (a death that is a necessary consequence of his absolute capacity for love). 5. In the maternal love that marks him, the feminine in the ecstasy thus discovers – little by little – first the god Altissimo in humility (in love with the nature he created) and then the god who steps aside out of love, the god of the Vesperbild.