A new light on the spirituality of the Venerable Euphemia of Raciborz

Bogusław Kochaniewicz

Faculty of Theology of the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań

Abstract

This article stresses evidence of the devotion of the Venerable Euphemia of Raciborz, a Dominican nun who lived in the fourteenth century Silesian monastery. The results of the analysis are based on the seventeenth century work by Abraham Bzovius which were deemed insufficient, mainly because they did not take into account the collection of sermons de tempore et de sanctis written by Peregrine of Opole, a fourteenth century Polish Dominican, the Confessor of Euphemia and the other Dominican nuns from Raciborz. The information included in this paper seems to verify the existing arrangements. They confirm the image of spirituality of the Venerable Euphemia, based on piety, well-known in the Middle Ages, as devotio moderna, characterized by the veneration of the Passion of Christ, veneration of the Eucharist, devotion to the Holy Spirit and to Our Lady. Despite certain thematic analogies included in the sermons of Johannes Tauler and of Peregrine from Opole, the hypothesis developed by contemporary historians, about the influence of the Rhine school of mysticism on the spirituality of the Dominican nuns in Raciborz, must be rejected.

Keywords:

Euphemia of Racibórz, Peregrine of Opole, mysticism, devotion, spirituality, Dominicans, fourteenth century