Today June 18

Today is the feast of St. Elizabeth of Schonau (1129-1164 AD). Wow, she was an interesting character. An uncritical hagiographer would not only tell the story of her pious life but put forth her many visions, though that is NOT why she is honored, and certainly not why she was beatified and canonized -- actually, she was never beatified nor canonized! I for one would also like to know what a psychiatrist would have to say about her visions.

She was a friend of St. Hildegard of Bingen; she was a mystic; and, she suffered an overbearing but pious brother, Egbert. Sigh. She entered the Benedictine convent at age 12 (there is a Cistercian convent by the name of Schonau, too, leading some to believe she was a member, but she was never a Cistercian) and was professed at 18. She immediately started having visions, but she also started fasting, wearing hair shirts and practicing other severe austerities. Does one have something to do with the other? Probably. Native Americans starved themselves on their vision quests and saw visions. Perhaps that explains the angel she supposedly saw who told her to pronounce dire judgments on certain people unless they did penance; she delayed obeying him -- no doubt because it seemed uncharitable -- and he -- the angel -- supposedly whipped her so severely she was black and blue for 3 days. C'mon. Does that sound like what we know about angels? Do they beat people -- holy people -- before the Judgment? Do they even after the Judgment? For that matter, do they desire to tear up the tares while the wheat is still growing? Isn't there something in the Bible about that?

Forgive me, St. Elizabeth. I've gone this far, I might as well go further. Her Book of the Ways of God, published by her brother, bears a disturbingly striking resemblance to her more famous friend Hildegard's Scivas. Besides that, it is chock-full of specific attacks against named persons -- people accused of many and various sins -- and supports Egbert's champion, the antipope Victor IV. Boo. It is clear his hand is in it, both in its theology and in its style. And her most famous work, her vision of St. Ursula and Companions, is quite honestly a crock. Butler's Lives is too polite to put it that way, but even he admits:
"Under strong pressure from her brother, as it would appear, she evolved an elaboration of the already fantastic story of St. Ursula, into which she introduced a Pope Cyriacus, who never existed, and all the newly discovered 'martyrs.' That this extravagant romance, entirely at variance with easily verifiable historical facts, should have gained immediate and widespread acceptance throws a rather sinister light upon the credulity of the age; though on the other hand, it is proof of the esteem in which Elizabeth was held."

Let's try to be positive. She may not have been canonized, but she has been esteemed as a saint for years and was a wise woman and superior of her community the last seven years of her life. She understood people, had an artistic and poetic nature, and was deeply sincere. She was honored not because of her writings but in spite of them!