Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community among the Nuns of Helfta by Anna Harrison (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community among the Nuns of Helfta by Anna Harrison Andrew K. Lee (bio) Thousands and Thousands of Lovers: Sense of Community among the Nuns of Helfta. By Anna Harrison. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2022. 494 pp. $49.95. Thousands and Thousands of Lovers (hereafter Thousands) is a comprehensive close reading of the Helfta literature that brings that community to life and immerses the reader in the Helfta nuns' communal spirituality. While scholarly attention on the Helfta community has often focused on a few individual luminaries (such as Gertrude the Great and Mechtild of Hackeborn) and their mystical visions, Harrison argues that the Helfta literature suggests a much more communal orientation, and that the shared spirituality of the Helfta nuns—indeed, of many spiritual writers in the later Middle Ages—has been woefully understudied. Harrison seeks to rectify this in Thousands through a meticulous study of Gertrude's The Herald of God's Loving-Kindness and Spiritual Exercises, Mechtild's Book of Special Grace, and other works that emerged from the Helfta community. Following an introduction that sets the Helfta writers and their community within the context of thirteenth-century northern European religion and spirituality, Harrison draws out numerous aspects of community in the Helfta literature, arranging them neatly in three sections that represent ever-expanding circles of inclusion and relationship. Part One, "The Nuns," by far the longest section at four chapters, analyzes the relationships among the nuns themselves in various arenas of their shared life. Chapter one unpacks the ways in which the writing of the Helfta literature was itself a communal process. Though these works have been attributed to individual authors, multiple women contributed to their composition. In the case of Special Grace, anonymous nuns recorded Mechtild's visions and teachings for several months without her knowledge, an indication of how deeply communal these texts were. Chapter two surveys the relationships among the nuns in the monastery. Harrison observes that the Helfta literature depicts Gertrude and Mechtild as deeply involved in the lives of their sisters. The picture of the monastery that emerges is of a place filled with continual conversation about Christ and the spiritual life as well as visions for and about others. In chapter three, Harrison analyzes the ways in which the monastery dealt with illness, death, and grief. The Helfta literature repeatedly shows the nuns caring for the sick and the dying in their community. Harrison also notes that the sense of community at Helfta extended to the dead; some of the visions were of the recently departed, and the living and the dead continued to be involved in and to influence one another's lives. Chapter four, the last chapter in the first section, discusses the Helfta liturgy. This is a critical point in Harrison's argument as she suggests that the liturgy more than any other aspect of the nuns' lives illustrates the sense of community among them. The Helfta literature is replete with experiences of liturgy and communal prayers; some of the visions even occur during services. Since liturgy was a communal activity, the nuns could support each other through it, the enthusiasm of one sister making up for the ennui of another from day to day. The second section, comprising chapters five and six, moves the circle of community out to those with whom the nuns had frequent contact. The fifth chapter examines the sense of community between the Helfta nuns and the priests and male religious who served the community as confessors and celebrants of the Eucharist. The focus of the Helfta literature is less on the men themselves than on the nuns' prayers for and visions about them. Harrison builds on the pioneering work of [End Page 354] Caroline Walker Bynum in pointing out the ways in which the Helfta nuns seems to have projected onto their priests and assumed some pastoral duties themselves. Chapter six examines the sense of community between the nuns and the conversi, those laymen who provided numerous services for the monastery, from manual labor to administration. Harrison observes that these laymen, too, appeared in the Helfta nuns' visions and discussions, and the nuns saw...