S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 2 1 9 Anton Vydra These all formed the backdrop of his imaginative world. On this soil he then built his spirituality, in which there is no hell, but everything ends in triumphant union with God. But three centuries later, the theme of the motherhood of God is developed again in a new framework. Around 1170, Anselm of Canterbury (1973, lines 421–426) [5] writes a prayer to St. Paul (for Princess Adelaide) in which he calls both the apostle and his Lord not only fathers but also mothers: Therefore, you are fathers by your effect and mothers by your affection. Fathers by your authority, mothers by your kindness. Fathers by your teaching, mothers by your mercy. Then you, Lord, are a mother and you, Paul, are a mother too. For the sake of accuracy, it should be said that in Anselm’s case this is a rare description of Christ as Mother, something not present in this way in his other texts. But the truth is that after him, the theme becomes very popular, especially in the 12th century, as Carolina Bynum (1982, 110–113) noticed, and continues as such until the onset of the Renaissance. However, 12th century authors did not speak of the motherhood of Christ with reference to the early Christian authors. Their language about motherhood is different. It can be said that the early Christian authors dealt with Gnostic objections (Gnostics believed that they were filled by full Wisdom as solid food, while Christians sucked the mother’s milk like small children in the spirit of St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:2). For the 12th century authors the emphasis is rather on the affectivity, sensitivity and tenderness of prelates who should not be purely paternalistic in their managing of church communities. There is also an emergence of several new commentaries on the Song of Songs in this period. This biblical text was one of the most difficult writings to interpret in medieval hermeneutics, for it included the topic of the feminine (Bride) and the masculine (Bridegroom) dangerously colliding in allegories that allowed the play of the imagination to be rekindled. The speech about the breasts of the Bridegroom reopened the theme of the motherhood of God, and medieval authors had to find their own interpretations that stimulated the imagination of the believers and nourished their spirituality. For example, according to Bernard of Clairvaux, the Bridegroom’s breasts symbolize patience and kindness, and his milk nourishes fervent souls, whereas the Bride’s breasts nourish “new souls,” those who are already beginning to seek and love God (Davy 1977, 81). Bernard certainly had immense devotion to the Virgin Mary, but his image of her as a mother was different from the motherhood of the ordinary women of the time, whom he never really trusted. In his eyes, the Virgin Mary’s motherhood was modified according to the model of Christ (Atkinson 1991, 119–120). It should be added, however, that the authors of the 12th century distinguish between the activity of the Mother (as temporal aspect) and the passivity of the Virgin (as eternal aspect): the Mother, as a symbol, constantly gives birth, while the Virgin humbly waits to be impregnated (Davy 1960, 376). We could go on to elicit further evidence of how (through the themes of motherhood and the femininity of God, and through related imaginaries) the distinct spiritual experiences of the authors of early Christianity and the Middle Ages were shaped. My intention here has only been to point out that in the history of spirituality, imagery bore a crucial role in shaping the conceptual frameworks upon which stood not only medieval mysticism or piety, but also the sophisticated reflections of theologians and philosophers. And although after the Middle Ages the theme of the motherhood of God gradually faded away, motherhood and femininity remained a subject of philosophical reflection. They entered philosophical discourse, a discourse that called for a new desacralized type of spirituality, a spirituality that might not bear that name at all, but nevertheless, that would describe some deeper anthropological experience, as we have seen above in Pierre Hadot. 4 Conclusions: Silence Without the Image Jan Patočka in his 1975 lecture The Spiritual Person and the Intellectual did not understand spiritual man as a religious believer, but as a deep and disquieted man thinking and re-thinking various themes of life (Patočka 2007, 51–69). It seems that Patočka opens the topic of secular spirituality without image, but he also writes about philosophical insight as a flash of lightning that for a fleeting moment will break the darkness. Imagination of light and darkness plays its role again here as in Dionysius the Areopagite or in medieval metaphysics of light. However, Patočka tries to keep a spiritual level of humanity, even re-defined by his own attitudes and in a non-religious context. However, the desire to remove spirituality from the religious sphere and to rid it of images was revived several times in the 20th century. But what happens when we separate spirituality from imagination? When we try to keep it in play, but without participating in representations influenced by
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