IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 730: In and out of Time: Mystics and Holy Persons Engaging with Time, III - Envisioning Eternity
Tuesday 7 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Sponsor: | Mysticism & Lived Experience Network (M&LEN) |
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| Organiser: | Philip Liston-Kraft, Independent Scholar |
| Moderator/Chair: | Einat Klafter, Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University |
| Paper 730-a | Margery Kempe and St Cecilia across Time (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety, Women's Studies |
| Paper 730-b | Entering the Eternal Present with Julian of Norwich and Fellow Contemplatives (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Religious Life, Theology, Women's Studies |
| Abstract | Medieval mystics and holy persons had a complex and layered relationship with time. Far from adhering to a single temporal framework, these figures moved fluidly between past, present, future, and beyond. A fundamental principle in medieval, if not all of mystical theology, is the notion that God has neither beginning nor end. God is everlasting, eternal, perpetual, conjuring a vastness of time beyond human comprehension. How, then, is any mortal creature to begin to grasp what it means to exist across that span of time—to know no temporal bounds? And how is such an expanse of time to be rendered in mere words? This session explores how the mystical visionaries Hadewijch of Brabant, Margery Kempe, and Julian of Norwich attempted each in her own way to convey in their writings some sense of divine “never-endingness.” |