“To God everything is possible….For he wants to be looked upon as a God who is marvellous in his creations.”[1]
“There is also a true story of the nymph in Staufenberg who sat on the road in all her beauty and served the lord she had chosen.”[2]
As I said last time, we have left the realm of reality and entered into the land of fairies. Echoes of our historical priestesses are preserved, but the direct links are severed as history gives way to folklore. Many of the true stories are grafted into the medieval romances of the day. We saw how this specifically happened with the King Arthur legends, and it occurred all over Europe.
However, one important thing changed over time: sea maidens were no longer looking for salvation, but for souls. And what is more, most clergy denied them this…
Paracelsus
I had a professor in college who said that if everyone was mad at you, you were probably doing something right. I’m not so sure that’s the case, especially when it comes to Paracelsus; but I have a soft spot for the misunderstood, and those who seek God in unlikely places (even if I do disagree with his theories!).
Paracelsus was (and is) a controversial individual. “His intense individualism made it impossible for him to accept the integral dogmas of the Catholic Church and its scholastic philosophy, just as he was unable to follow the doctrines of the Reformation.”[3] The last part is rather odd, since “the Bible was the starting point of his thought,”[4] and that was one of the pillars of the Reformation.
Paracelsus is often linked with the occult. Certainly, I don’t know all of his activities; however, from the one treatise, it seems he was truly and deeply seeking God around him, and that he was a believer in Christ.[5]
But his theology and reputation don’t really matter here. Paracelsus is important to us because he had many theories on supernatural beings, including our sea-maidens…
Paracelsus’ Theory
Paracelsus traveled widely as an itinerant physician,[6] and collected “many…tales and stories” in the process.[7] Specifically, he collected tales of nature spirits (although he didn’t believe them to be spirits, but flesh and blood[8]). These creatures were part of every European culture, which intrigued him. He wanted to find a place for them in God’s world.
Obviously, we don’t believe in these things anymore. But everyone studies the world through the lens of their beliefs, and medieval people believed in supernatural beings. As I said last time, they filled an important middle ground that Christians often don’t consider.
Most theologians looked on these creatures as demons,[9] but Paracelsus looked on them differently. He said God created these creatures to guard the treasures of the earth,[10] and they have the same intellect as man but the nature of beasts. In this, he meant: none of them had souls.[11]
But there was hope for one of these: the water women – the undinae[12] – could be saved…
Paracelsus’ Undina
As I said before, if a woman chose to forsake her worldly powers as priestess in order to follow Christ, she would ultimately have chosen to become a wife and mother. Thus, the legend of gaining a soul through marriage was born.
Paracelsus goes into this legend in great detail. He describes how a water woman gains a soul through marriage, as well as souls for the children she bears to her human husband.[13] However, there are stipulations.
First, an undina should not be “provoked in any way by their husbands while they are on water,” or else they will “simply drop into the water, and nobody can find them any more.” Second, a man must not take another wife if the undina disappears in this manner, nor can he repudiate the undina if he begins to think of her as a “devil.” If he does, the undina “brings him death.”[14]
Paracelsus is quick to say that this is just, for “since [duty and loyalty] were not kept, she herself” is allowed to “[punish] the adulterer (for no judge would have passed a sentence at her request, since she was not from Adam). Thus God granted her the punishment that is appropriate for adultery, and permitted her to be her own judge, since the world repudiated her as a spirit or devil.”[15]
Paracelsus’ Source
Paracelsus uses the example of the “true story” of the wife of “von Staufenberg” to support his theories. This allusion is taken from a medieval poem written by Egenolf von Staufenberg, written between 1310-1320.[16] I was not able to find the poem itself, but found two sources that talked about the poem, which you can find here and here. The story is similar to the “facts” Paracelsus reports, although Paracelsus goes into more details about the nature of undinae.
The poem “celebrate[s] the adventures” of Egenolf’s ancestor, Peter von Staufenberg.[17] However, it seems Egenolf took an older story and embellished it. Or, it was a true story of a pagan “mermaid” who longed for salvation, married his ancestor Peter, and was later repudiated…But I suppose that is just conjecture.
Why this Matters
I know this week has been full of tangents, but I hope you’ve had fun exploring this with me! We have a fascinating mythology surrounding our once real sea-maidens. Their image merged with what they once worshiped, creating a enticing and dangerous sea-fairy.
We also have a nice trail of crumbs to follow. Paracelsus wrote his treatise in the mid- to late-1500s, based on a poem written in the early 1300s. And in 1811, the material underwent another transition. Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué made it into one of the loveliest stories we’ll discuss in this series: Undine.
Sources
[1] Paracelsus, A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits in Four treatises of Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, translated by Henry E. Sigerist (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941) 233.
[2] Ibid., 244.
[3] Henry E. Sigerist, Intro to A Book on Nymphs, 215.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Paracelsus, A Book on Nymphs, 227.
[6] Henry E. Sigerist, Intro to A Book on Nymphs, vii.
[7] Paracelsus, A Book on Nymphs, 241.
[8] Ibid., 228.
[9] Henry E. Sigerist, Intro to A Book on Nymphs, 218.
[10] Ibid., 219-220.
[11] Paracelsus, A Book on Nymphs, 230
[12] Ibid., 231.
[13] Paracelsus, A Book on Nymphs, 238.
[14] Ibid., 242.
[15] Paracelsus, A Book on Nymphs, 245.
[16] Prettyman, C. William, “Peter Von Staufenberg and Marie De France,” Modern Language Notes 21, no. 7 (November 1906): 205-08, Accessed May 07, 2018, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2917721; and Meri Lao, Sirens: Symbols of Seduction (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1998), 130.
[17] “Peter Von Staufenberg,” 205 .
