{"id":1827,"date":"2025-02-12T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T20:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medingen.seh.ox.ac.uk\/?p=1827"},"modified":"2025-02-27T06:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T06:50:11","slug":"trahe-me-post-te","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medingen.seh.ox.ac.uk\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/trahe-me-post-te\/","title":{"rendered":"Trahe me post te"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The \u2018Song of Songs\u2019 in Medieval Female Communities<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lecture for the Training Group ‘Autonomy of Heteronomous Texts in Antiquity and the Middle Ages’<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the start of the \u2018Song of Songs\u2019, the choir of the young women sing \u2018Draw me after you, and we will follow\u2019 (Chorus Adolescentularum: Trahe me, post te curremus<\/em>, Ct 1:2) which is a line that is taken up time and again in medieval song, meditation, and prayer, particularly in female religious communities. This was despite \u2013 or perhaps even because \u2013 the ‘Song of Songs’ was not only one of the most influential but also one of the most controversial texts in the Middle Ages. The poetic love dialogue attributed to king Solomon is the only biblical book where there is no literal sense possible; even in the Jewish tradition there is already an inherent need for a commentary to explain the allegorical reading which then forms the basis for all medieval engagement with the text. The lecture proposes that the importance for medieval female communities is precisely in the intersection of erotic and allegorical aspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The analysis follows the creative engagement with the Song of Songs commentary tradition in Latin and vernacular literature from Williram von Ebersberg\u2019s commentary (11th century) and the ‘St. Trudperter Hohelied’ (12th century) and mystics such as Mechthild von Magdeburg (13th century) to the wide variety of responses in devotional texts, images and music in the 15th and 16th centuries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main focus will be on the bilingual writing of the Northern German nuns from the Cistercian Abbey of Medingen with a final look at ‘Herr Christ der einge Gottssohn’, a hymn written in Wittenberg in 1522 by the former nun Elisabeth Cruciger, n\u00e9e von Meseritz, and printed in the first Protestant hymnbook in 1524, showing how bridal mysticism based on the Song of Songs commentary tradition from the convents shapeshifts in Reformation theology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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