Here is a rare painting of Frau Minne, the Goddess-Allegory of Love popular among German-speaking Europeans in the Middle Ages. Her actions radically contradict the ways we often think women were expected to behave: Minne is forceful and violent, and she is always victorious. Here in this 14th-century coffer she is about to pierce the heart of the man next to her. Frau Minne involved herself in the sensual affairs of mortal lovers, but some religious poets wrote about her in spiritual terms as well. A 13th-century woman named Mechthild of Magdeburg described a mystical vision in _The Flowing Light of the Godhead_ in which Frau Minne, Goddess of Love, declares herself more powerful than a mortal soul and even able to command the Christian God: “That I hunted you [the soul] was my fancy. That I captured you was my desire. That I bound you made me happy. When I wounded you, you were joined to me. When I cudgel you, I take you into my power. I drove God the almighty from heaven, took his human life, and returned him to his Father in honor. How do you, vile worm, expect to survive before me?” There is a resonance of BDSM-talk here that corolates with the way Medieval nobility considered courtly love: passionate, demanding of submission, powerful, and addictive.
Source(s): For the quote and Frau Minne information, see Barbara Newman, _God and the Goddesses_, (Univ of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) p. 157 and following. Coffer from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters.
