‘Two Mystics and a Saint Walk into the Basement of the Newberry Library’: 2023 Spring Council Class Commences

This May, the Marty Center continues its signature Council Class with an adult education course focused on the (auto)biographies of Christian saints, mystics, and martyrs, including the resonance of these stories and texts over time. Taught by Willemien Otten, the Center’s outgoing Faculty Co-Director and the Divinity School’s Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Theology and the History of Christianity, the course is the fourth installment of the Council Class series, which is offered on a quarterly basis to members of the Divinity School Council and their guests. Previous classes have covered topics such as the Hebrew bible, medieval Islamic mysticism, and sex and gender in early Christian literature. Otten’s class began May 2 and concludes May 23.

We recently sat down with Otten to discuss her approach to teaching the Council Class (titled “Mystics, Saints, and Martyrs: Christian (Auto)Biographies in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages”), the importance of what it covers, and her thoughts on public-facing scholarship. The conversation below has been edited and organized for clarity.

Marty Center: Thank you for joining us! First, would you tell us about what inspired you to teach this class Divinity School Council?
Willemien Otten: When I was invited to do it, I thought it was very nice that I can talk about things I really love reading and talking about anyway, and that I don't really have to feel boxed in – like “I have to teach this class and meet certain criteria.” So it gives me greater freedom, I would say, than an ordinary class.

Marty Center: Please tell us about the topic of the course and the texts you’ll cover.
Willemien Otten: The course covers an interesting variety of texts in the early Christian and medieval periods. During our first class, and we read a martyrdom account of an early Christian woman who was very young – in her twenties – had a child, was in prison, and eventually was martyred. She had some visions. It’s a really early text (around 200 CE) by a Roman Christian woman, which is unusual, who testifies to her faith and knows the fate that she's going to face. We also read the story of Augustine's conversion.

The other thing I like to do in this class is to see how certain texts resonate over time. So, for instance, this martyrdom story of the woman called Perpetua – she became a saint then in North Africa, and Augustine later preached sermons on her about two centuries later. You see how a chain of Christian texts begins to weave itself through history over time. The resonances are really kind of interesting. 

Marty Center: What would you say is the importance of teaching this course, and the importance of the subject matter for people to understand the history of Christianity?
Willemien Otten: It is interesting how we think of Christianity as sort of the hegemonic religion of the West. But there is a way in which Christian texts, I would say in the history of literature or philosophy, have been short shrifted. There’s a famous example of a patristic scholar who says that if the Life of Saint Macrina by Gregory of Nyssa had been written in the fourth century before the Common Era – around the time of Plato and Aristotle – instead of the fourth century of the Common Era, it would have been a great cultural highlight, but now it's sidelined as a Christian text. I want to see these texts as great texts. Sure, they're Christian texts, but they're also great literary and philosophical achievements. That is what I think I want to convey in the class.

Marty Center: What kind of pedagogical approach are you taking with this particular class and audience?
Willemien Otten:I thought this was slightly funny, but I set it up so that the first class was on a martyr and a saint, Perpetua and Augustine. In an upcoming session, I think I’m covering two monks and a philosopher. So I said to people when the class began, I was thinking of this standard joke – “two philosophers walk into a bar...” – and now people have “two mystics and a saint walk into the basement of the Newberry Library, where there will be a course on them.” I try to keep it light, let's put it that way. But I think the way I often work is that I'm attracted by texts having to do with certain authors or figures who are central in that text, and then I try to weave a narrative around that.

Marty Center: Is this different from how you would approach things at the university?
Willemien Otten: At the university level, I usually teach either with a focus more on early Christianity or with a focus more on the Middle Ages. To do the crossover is actually really interesting because it shows you both continuity and difference. I would not have very much opportunity to do that at the university. It’s actually nice to go across period boundaries.

I was thinking to myself, it's also nice that I don't have to grade anyone. There’s a relaxed and in that sense, a very conversational way in which you can discuss these texts. To the extent that pedagogy can become pedantic, there's none of that in this kind of a class.

Marty Center: What’s it like teaching in the physical space of the Newberry Library versus being on campus?
Willemien Otten: I think it adds to that conversational tone. There is a lack of tension. I think when you're at the university, you're very aware of your role, the reputation of the university, et cetera. By contrast, this course allows me to kind of take a step back and go for the material I am interested in.

I know the Newberry fairly well because I had a summer grant there years ago. I've been in the library many, many times. It’s also right downtown, so you're surrounded by all these high-rise buildings. So it has this lofty atmosphere of a prestigious library – and at the same time, this modern setting of the skyline of Chicago. It's all combined. The fact that it's away from the university adds a little to the fun.

I also feel that you can be more reflective – reflect on what you would do in a class and have the liberty not to necessarily have to do it in this class, given that it’s so different. I think that enriches for me the experience. I am not entirely identified with my role at the university. I can actually step out of my role a little bit.

Marty Center: What do you hope people take away from your course?
Willemien Otten: To take these texts very seriously, as products of human literary skills, but also testimonies of faith, and more broadly, of what people thought about in a certain age. And to see at the same time that those Christian texts are also part of the cultural production of the period.

I started the class by saying that I heard years ago a talk at the humanities festival of the University of Chicago, where the person was saying, “Oh, you know, we had the great days of Plato and Aristotle, then Christianity arrived and everything went downhill, and you basically had to wait until the Renaissance before there was light at the end of the tunnel.” I hope to complement that view, but also upend it and show that Christianity was part of culture, but it also shaped that culture.

Marty Center: What do you think is the importance of doing public-facing scholarship like this?
Willemien Otten: My father is a pastor. I have a sister who's a pastor. Three of my parents’ six kids went into theology. I've also always liked preaching; I just think there's a real value to it. What I like about it is that you can reach a large group of people who are not necessarily all academically educated, but because they have a certain vocabulary in common, you are able to convey a sustained, meaningful message. I think the challenge and what interests me in this sort of public speaking is to not hound on inside knowledge, and yet to try and communicate deep thoughts, high-level material. I think that can be done.

Years ago when I was still at Utrecht University, I did a number of CDs on the whole history of Christianity. That was done in three or four settings and taped in front of a live audience. It was an academic audience, but in the city, as an open lecture for everybody who wanted to come. Of course, I had to compress a lot to cover the entire history of Christianity in four CDs, but at the same time, it was interesting to make my own selections and weave my own story. Like in the course here, you can create an arc and try to present a narrative that is a whole. So I think I like creating those narratives, as well.

Marty Center: What are you looking forward to about the arc of this course?
Willemien Otten: In the next session, we will look at some stories from Saints lives. It’s very interesting that these are sort of simple stories, right? Simple narratives. One is about a young boy who's in a monastery who leaves the monastery without permission from his superiors and then dies. And there's a whole story that unravels after that when the earth refuses to accept his body for burial until the saint intervenes.

What is fascinating to me about these early saints’ lives – prior to say, the 800s – is that they were written by very accomplished theologians who could also, if they wanted, write about the trinity or some more esoteric topic, or write biblical commentaries. They did that, too, but they also clearly wanted to have this other outlet. They also wanted to have these stories about saints as literature for people to be edified by, educated by, maybe even diverted by – who knows?

I just find that fascinating. These great theologians were not university professors like we are, but very often were bishops. They had a pastoral side to them, but also really had an astute awareness, I would say, of the multiple audiences that they were serving – and increasingly serving, because as the Church grew or as the movement of Christianity grew, you had intellectuals, but you also had uneducated people. It was a challenge to keep them all within one Church. I think the stories of these saints’ lives point to the awareness these authors had that they needed to really keep the Church together in some ways.

Marty Center: Is there anything you’d like to add or that we should have asked about?
Willemien Otten: What I do want to say – and this would connect with Erin Walsh’s course before mine, too – is that it is interesting that there are a good number of texts in pre-modern Christianity by and about women. I think that's a leg up compared to texts from classical antiquity, right? I mean, while there isn't the same participation by women as men in the Middle Ages, in the monasteries women were educated and could write. This puts them at an advantage compared to the Reformation, when their participation in theological endeavors drops off. Although I'm not advocating that we should go back to the pre-modern era, women in a religious setting had certain opportunities for learning and so on that were more difficult to come by both in earlier times and in later times.

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Featured photograph from public domain. "Conversion of Saint Augustine" by Fra Angelico.