Holy Kinship

Hans Thoman, Heilige Sippe (c. 1515),
Andreas Preifcke, photographer

The cult of St. Anne "was a popular one in the late Middle Ages in England as elsewhere, and she and her daughters provided a symbolic affirmation of the rootedness of the Incarnate Christ within a real human family. At a time when much in the cult of the saints militated against a positive valuation of human sexuality and the realities of marriage and childbearing, the cult of Anne provided an image of female fruitfulness which was maternal rather than virginal, and her thrice-married state, rivalling the career of the Wife of Bath, was an unequivocal assertion of the compatibility of sanctity and married life. She represented both the notion of the family and the principle of fertility, whose three holy daughters gave birth in their turn to six Apostles and the Saviour of the world".
St. Margaret, "whose spectacular torments and miraculous preservation spoke of holiness and otherness, was a symbol of transcendent power, the sacred beyond the limits of the experience of ordinary people. Her power to help sprang from her divinely protected and heroic virginal integrity. The figures in the other paintings are even more sacred beings - Christ and his six cousins, all of them Apostles, and Anne's three holy daughters. But here they are mothers and children of flesh and blood: one of the toddlers blows bubbles from a pipe, another clutches a toy windmill. The screen spoke to the women of Ranworth simultaneously of the divine indwelling in the concrete reality of the family, of the sanctity of marriage and procreation and God's blessing on ordinary things, and at the same time of the transcendent power of God to help those in extremity, symbolized by Margaret's virginal intercession. As in the case of Henry Walter and St Erasmus, the specialist saint is given a richly human symbolic context which prevents her being seen as a mere mechanical dispenser of power and favour."

     Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2005), 181-182.

A prayer cobbled together out of Jn 17 RSV

Holy Father, keep me in thy name, which thy Son, Jesus Christ, hast given me, that I may know the glory of being perfectly one with thy saints in thee, even as ye are one.  Guard me, and lose me not.  Keep me from the evil one.  Sanctify and consecrate me in the truth, thy word, that I might have his joy fulfilled in myself.  May I be with him where he is, to behold his glory which thou hast given him in thy love for him before the foundation of the world.  And may this love with which thou hast loved him be in me, and he in me.

Holy Father, keep me in thy name, which thy Son, Jesus Christ, hast given me, that I may be perfectly one with thy saints in thee, even as thou, Father, art in him, and he in thee.  Guard me, and lose me not.  Keep me from the evil one.  Sanctify and consecrate me in the truth, thy word, that I might have his joy fulfilled in myself.  May I be with him where he is, to behold his glory which thou hast given him in thy love for him before the foundation of the world.  And may this love with which thou hast loved him be in me, and he in me.

Or us/we/ourselves.

     Inspired by this late 5th-century tablet, found in a grave at Hács-Béndekpuszta, east of Budapest, in "A world winking with messages" (Peter Brown).

Pseudonymity

"Bacon warned that many magical texts had attained their notable ability to survive and cross borders by adopting false papers—the names of apparently famous and reliable authors:  'Whatever they say, that Solomon composed this or that, or other wise men, is to be denied.  For the authority of the church and of the wise does not accept books like this, but seducers, who fool the world.  For they compose new books, and multiply new inventions, as we know from experience.  And then, so that they may attract men even more strongly, they give their books celebrated titles, and impudently ascribe them to great authors.'"

     Roger Bacon, "Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae, et de nullitate magiae," in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. J. S. Brewer (London:  Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859), 526, as translated at Anthony Grafton, Magus:  the art of magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2023), 26.  (Yet Bacon was himself more enamoured of astrology than, say, Nicholas of Cusa.)

Neue Quäckerey in der Quietisterey

"The theologia mystica has been still more fruitful in the present century and spread [abroad] a pile of Schwärmer [(ein Hauffen Schwärmereyen)].  From this platonic egg were hatched [(hervorgefrochen) untranslated:] the Weigelianer, Rosenkreutzer, neueren Propheten, Stifelianer, Methisten, Hoburgianer, Böhmisten, Widertauffer, Quäcker, Bourignisten, Quietisten, [and] Septenisten. . . . [T]he Quaker Barclay cited the experience of Bernard, Bonaventure, Tauler, Thomas à Kempis, and other mystical teachers."

     Ehregott Daniel Colberg, Platonistich-hermenetisches Christenthum, begreiffend die historische Erzehlung vom Ursprung und vielerley Secten der heutigen Fanatischen Theologie, unterm Namen der Paracelsisten, Weigelianer, Rosencreutzer, Quäcker, Böhmisten, Widertäuffer, Bourignisten, Labadisten and Quietisten (Frankfuhrt:  1690) 1.16 (vol. 1, pp. 75-76).  The reference seems to be to Apology 11.5.  I was put onto this by Bern Roling, “Mittelalterliche Mystik im Kreutzfeuer des Pietismusstreites:  der Wittenberger Theologe Martin Chladni (1669-1725) und seine Auseinandersetzung mit der Frauenmystik des Hochmittelalters, Pietismus und Neuzeit 46/47 (2020/2021):  40 (38-84):

War es Zufall, so hatte Colberg gefragt, das ein Quäker wie Robert Barclay (1648-1690) sich auf Bernhard von Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Bonaventura (1221-1274) hatte befufen können?

Cf. the title cited in n6:  Conrad Tiburtius Rango, Neue Quäckerey in der Quietisterey (Frankfurt:  1688).  For what very little it may be worth, neither Colberg nor Rango are listed in Smith's 1873 Bibliotheca anti-Quakeriana.

Ordo naturae

Universität Wien

"For this reason one may not confuse the phrase order of nature with [the phrase] biological order, much less . . . [(gleichsetzen)] the realities they signify.  Biological order is [only] the order of nature to the degree that [the latter] is amenable to the empirical and descriptive methods of the natural sciences.  But to the extent that the order of nature is a specific order of existence that stands in [an] obvious relation to the causa prima (to God, the Creator), it is no longer a [merely] biological order."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.

"the gate is narrow and the way is hard [(einfaltig)], that leads to life [(Fülle)]"

Universität Wien

"The religious symbol-system of Israel was, with reference to the multiplicity [(Vielfalt)] of Ancient [Near] Eastern [polytheism]—indeed ancient polytheism [more generally]—comparatively simple:  YHWH is one and . . . unique (Dt 6:4), exclusive, shuts out all other gods. . . .  The God of the Bible is no fan of [riotous] diversity [(Vielfalt)]."

"Against the background of the genesis and phenomenology of the religious symbol system attested to in the Bible, [our contemporary] praise of [sexual] diversity looks to me like a surreptitious praise of polytheism.  It is [well-]suited to the self-understanding of the postmodern, [and] stands for all of that in opposition to the biblical tradition.  The God of Israel is one; he is constant [(true)], does not dissemble, wears no masks, has nothing evil up his sleeve.  The fulfillment [(Fülle)] that the biblical faith promises is not to be confused with the profusions [(Vielfalt)] of ancient cosmotheism.  [It is] only through the needle's-eye of simplicity [(Einfalt)] that man acquires access to the plenitude [(Fülle)] of the God attested to in the Bible:  so confess both Judaism and Christianity together (cf. Mk 12:28-34, 1 Thess 1:9, Rom 6:21)."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.

The Differentiation

"Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the universe, who makes a distinction between sacred and mundane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the Seventh Day and the six workdays. Blessed are You, L‑rd, who makes a distinction between sacred and mundane."

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַמַּבְדִּיל בֵּין קֹדֶשׁ לְחוֹל בֵּין אוֹר לְחֹשֶׁךְ בֵּין יִשְׂרָאֵל לָעַמִּים בֵּין יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי לְשֵׁשֶׁת יְמֵי הַמַּעֲשֶׂה בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי הַמַּבְדִּיל בֵּין קֹדֶשׁ לְחוֹל

     The Havdalah.