[9] It was her Dominican confessor, Henry of Halle, who encouraged and helped Mechthild to compose The Flowing Light.

[6] Her criticism of church dignitaries[10] and her claims to theological insight aroused so much opposition that some called for the burning of her writings.

[12] Mechthild's book is written in the Middle Low German that was spoken in the region of Magdeburg at the time.

[13] Mechthild's writings comprise the seven books of Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (The Flowing Light of Divinity), which was composed between 1250 and 1280.

After joining the community of Cistercian nuns at Helfta around 1272, she added a seventh book, rather different in tone from the previous six.

[14] The Flowing Light was originally written in Middle Low German, the language of northern Germany.

Then, in the mid-fourteenth century, the secular priest Henry of Nördlingen translated The Flowing Light into the Alemannic dialect of Middle High German.

It was created by Susan Turcot as part of a project in collaboration with the Art Museum of the Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen.

The Medievalist Hildegard Elisabeth Keller integrated Mechthild von Magdeburg as one of five main female characters in her work The Trilogy of the Timeless, published at the end of September 2011.