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Document Details : Title: The Spiritual Dialogue Sister Catherine Subtitle: A Testimony of the Close Relation between Beguines and Dominicans in Fourteenth-Century Strasbourg Author(s): KIKUCHI, Satoshi Journal: Studies in Spirituality Volume: 33 Date: 2024 Pages: 163-180 DOI: 10.2143/SIS.33.0.3293661 Abstract : This article discusses the historical background of the dialogue text, Sister Catherine [Schwester Katrei], written in Middle High German in the early fourteenth century in Strasbourg. This fictive dialogue describes meetings between the two figures – a lay woman and her confessor – and their spiritual growth until their arrival at the union with God. Due to its use of audacious mystical expressions, this text has been studied mainly within the scholarship on medieval heretics (especially the so-called ‘Free Spirits’) and on the reception of Meister Eckhart in folk religious literature. By analyzing the descriptions of the two figures in the dialogue with the aid of a number of historical sources, this article attempts to clarify that no direct influence can be found in this text either from the Free Spirits or from Eckhart, but rather that this text may reflect a close relationship between the Beguines in fourteenth-century Strasbourg under the persecution by the bishop and the parish church of the city and the Dominican friars who were responsible for the spiritual care for those lay women. It is within this context that the article also examines how the Dominicans tried to defend the legitimacy of the Beguines and, by so doing, to retrieve the founding ideals of their own order. |
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