Page:Of Six Mediaeval Women (1913).djvu/122

 darkness, knowledge without fruition, the very pain of Hell. Fruition can be reached only through Death." In one of her visions she, in an exquisite simile, describes how love flows from the Godhead to mankind, penetrating both body and soul. "It goes without effort," she says, "as does a bird in the air when it does not move its wings." In the same vision she sees the Holy Mother, with uncovered breasts, standing on God's left hand, and Christ on the right, showing his still-open wounds, both pleading for sinful humanity, and she adds that as long as sin endures on earth, so long will Christ's wounds remain open and bleeding, though painless, but that after the Day of Judgment they will heal, and it will be as though there was a rose-leaf instead of the wounds.

Of Love, as she conceived it in relation to