The Body behind the Altar: The Transgression of Space and the Transformation of the Body in the Life and Revelations of Agnes Blannbekin

abstract:Agnes Blannbekin's description of her mystical experience on Easter morning, 1293, is a rare medieval account not only of the affective consequences of a spatial transgression in a church building but also of its direct implication in a spiritual revelation. According to her Life and Revelations, she heard a command to conceal herself behind an altar in the church of St. Michael, Vienna, where she would feel the pain of the Crucifixion. Her anguish at being so out of place in the church drove her to pray for her revelation to end and to be given the strength to leave. She provides, thus, a rare first-person account of how the gendered regulation of church space, so often in evidence in sources written by men, was manifested in an embodied, affective experience. The incident develops themes that extend across the Life, especially to other Easter-time revelations, and demonstrates the close attention Blannbekin often gave to architectural organization and ornamentation. This article describes how her account drew together associations that stretched across liturgical time, architectural setting, and literary precedent in order to evoke the profundity, and significance, of her bodily identification with the Passion.