Due to the poetic power of her only work, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (The Flowing Light of the Divinity, circa 1250-circa 1282), Mechthild von Magdeburg ranks not only among the most admired German spiritual writers of the thirteenth century but also among the most innovative authors of medieval Germany. It can be argued that Das fließende Licht der Gottheit is the first extant work to use German prose to express original thought; before Mechthild, German prose was used almost exclusively for translations, mainly from Latin.

To document what she believed to be her soul's mystical journeys to God, Mechthild blends religious and secular language in unprecedented ways. She justifies her soul's yearning for spiritual union with God by means of both the Neoplatonic emanationist doctrine and courtly models of love and also draws on a wide range of motifs from biblical exegesis and from...