The World as Vulva: Genital Metaphors in the Writing and Images of Female Mystics

Abstract

The notion of a “rise of the individual” in the twelfth century offers a fruitful lens for examining early mystical literature. While the modern idea of individuality does not strictly apply, monastic writers increasingly turned their attention to the anima, the seipsum, and the homo interior. This inward turn positioned the self as a space of divine encounter. Through practices such as contemplation, confession, and visionary meditation, the self became an object of scrutiny, a site where human nature, created in God’s image, could be observed and understood. Mystical writings give vivid expression to these experiences, employing first-person narration, reflexive commentary, and inventive attempts to convey the ineffable. Erotic and corporeal imagery, often highlighted by scholars, does not signify transgression but serves as a vehicle for theological insight, transforming inner spiritual processes into forms that can be communicated. In this context, the self operates both as witness to the divine and as an instrument through which the divine is apprehended and interpreted. Against this background, the thesis can be further elaborated by linking the analysis with the methodological instruments of egodocument research and book history. In the case of Hildegard von Bingen’s Liber Scivias (1151/1152), she emerges not only as a visionary but also as an active participant in a self-reflective writing and translation process that reveals traces of an individual, spiritual self both in the text and in the subsequent book production. Similarly, in the case of fourteenth-century books of hours, the clients’ instructions and requests for specific images provide insight into how they reveal traces of themselves and their devotional identity. Manuscript culture extends this dynamic: texts are paired with images: diagrams, symbolic bodies, or anthropomorphic cosmologies that visualize inner processes. Female mystics developed intimate forms of Unio Mystica with Christ, often expressed in metaphors of intercourse, which later influenced books of hours depicting Christ’s side wound vulvarly. These works reveal the integration of corporeality, gendered experience, and individualized spirituality into textual and visual media, demonstrating that medieval mystical and devotional culture relied on a sophisticated interplay of self-reflection, materiality, and gender-specific religious practice.