the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

he begins to steer the discussion away from objects in general to one particular kind of
object—books. Returning to the wisdom implanted in Adam at creation, Weigel does not
explicitly say how fully formed it is. He does not simply mean that every person is
naturally born with the capacity to acquire these things through a formal education, but
rather that the actual details of all these accomplishments are locked away in a person’s
brain at birth and must only be remembered with the aid of books. 306 Weigel repeats the
trope that learned ignorance—what the wise fool knows—is to be valued above the book
learning of clerics and university doctors. 307 What a scholar cannot even master in thirty
years by reading books, a person who cultivates self-knowledge can learn more
accurately in three years (“Was in ander in XXX Jahren nicht lernen kan, das mag ein
solcher in III Jahren Lernen ohne allen Irthumb”). 308 For Weigel, learning by reading
books at university is not only time-consuming, but can only lead to error. Rather,
knowledge of the world is gained by coming to know oneself more fully, by turning
inwards to access the vast stores of knowledge implanted by God in Adam and all his
descendants at the moment of creation. In line with his general theory of knowledge, the
306 Although it does seem blatantly counterfactual that a person is born knowing, for instance, Hebrew
grammar and the rules of rhetoric, nevertheless Weigel already provides here some ammunition for his oftrepeated
attack on the schools and universities. As the product of a state-sponsored primary and university
education, it was perhaps not unreasonable that Weigel considered the schools and universities as
hopelessly corrupted by worldly ambitions and the site of political intervention. If a complete school and
university education is innate to every person, Weigel can dismiss educational institutions while still
retaining the practical knowledge they provided students.
307 Readers of medieval mystical texts will be familiar with this trope and the debate about clerical
authority it refers to. Mechthild of Magdeburg, for instance, chose to write in the vernacular (and
thematized her choice) rather than in the Latin of the educated clergy as part of her call to reform.
Moreover, she disavows direct authorship of her book (God himself claims to have written it), turning her
supposed ignorance (as a woman writing in the vernacular) into a claim to authority. As Mechthild writes:
“das ist mir vor inen ein gros ere und sterket die heiligen cristanheit an in vil sere, das der ungelerte munt
die gelerte zungen von minem heiligen geiste leret” (“It is a great honor for me and it very much
strengthens Holy Christianity that the unlearned mouth, aided by my Holy Spirit, teaches the learned
tongue.”) Moreover, the passage just quoted is placed in the mouth of God himself, whom Mechthild
claims to be quoting here, conversing with her. Mechthild of Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit
(Book II, ch. 26: 29-33) cited in Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the
Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 38.
308 Weigel, Griff, 12.
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