SOURCE: Suydam, Mary A. “The Touch of Satisfaction: Visions and the Religious Experience According to Hadewijch of Antwerp.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 12, no. 2 (fall 1996): 5-27.

[In the following essay, Suydam offers a comparative analysis of Hadewijch's Visions, Letters and Mengeldichten using the tools of feminist criticism to discover the manner in which these mystical writings challenge the hierarchies and dichotomies of religious literature.]

Hadewijch of Antwerp, a thirteenth-century Dutch Beguine, was a gifted writer, poet, and mystic. She was one of the first authors to shape the Dutch language into written form.¹ Her works, collected in five different manuscripts dating from the fourteenth century or later, comprise 31 letters (Brieven), 14 visions (Visioenen), and two collections of poetry, in stanzaic verse (Strofische Gedichten) and in rhymed verse (Mengeldichten).² Her ideas were borrowed by Ruusbroec and possibly influenced Eckhart.³

A persistent challenge for scholars has been the interpretation and integration of Hadewijch's religious ideas throughout her very different literary works. Because there is no information about Hadewijch other than that contained in her works, it is impossible to determine the sequence in which she wrote the Visions, her two collections of poetry, and the Letters. In Hadewijch's case, an additional challenge comes from the fact that the surviving manuscripts do not contain the same works. Moreover there is disagreement over the authorship of a portion of her work.⁴

When I first began studying Hadewijch, I found the dense symbolism and unfamiliar format of her Visions particularly challenging. The Visions did not fit familiar categories of spirituality, nor could I relate the insights within them to those of her other works. On the one hand, Hadewijch's religious experiences seemed centered in the body, making constant reference to a physical relationship with God. On the other hand, some of the language echoed a Platonist desire to transcend the body. In order to make sense of this tension, I became interested in the relationship between the Visions and her other writings, especially the Letters and the Mengeldichten. Gradually I came to the conclusion that the ideas and symbolism in Hadewijch's Visions were integrated throughout her works.

This article explores the relationships between Hadewijch's themes and imagery in “Visions 5,” “7,” “9,” and “13,” and similar themes in the Letters and in the Mengeldichten. These visions of Eucharistic ecstasy, mystical union, Minnemystik (Love mysticism), and seraphic glory represent important themes throughout Hadewijch's other literary works. In this article I accept the Visions as a literary genre in its own right and do not attempt to classify Hadewijch's insights into hierarchies of religious stages such as “affective” and “contemplative.” Such an analysis has two surprising and significant results. First, Hadewijch's religiosity is shown to remarkably consistent across her different writings, suggesting that her works form an integrated whole, the product of a mature lifetime. Second, Hadewijch's religious experiences are seen to involve the whole person. Her genius was to destabilize dichotomies and hierarchies such as soul/body or intellect/senses. This destabilization occurs in all of Hadewijch's literary works. Only by connecting the Visions with the rest of her work, does the continuity of imagery, themes, and terminology across the entire corpus of Hadewijch's work become apparent. It is clear that the Visions remained a significant part of Hadewijch's religious life long after the initial experiences.⁵

These conclusions reflect feminist scholarship that questions previous assumptions about medieval women's religious writings. These assumptions include the denigration of visionary religious literature. Before analyzing Hadewijch's Visions, then, I define the specific problems that feminist scholars have identified in regard to the value placed upon medieval women's religious literature.

THE MISLEADING DICHOTOMY OF IMMATURITY/MATURITY

Many scholars assume that the Visions belong to the earliest period of Hadewijch's religious experience, principally because “Vision 6” declares that she was only nineteen years old at the time. Jozef Van Mierlo believed that, although the Visions occurred in Hadewijch's youth, the written form showed signs of later composition. Still, he believed they were composed earlier than Hadewijch's Letters.⁶ This belief often leads to the assumption that the Visions are not the product of a mature author. For example, E. B. Zum Brunn and G. Épiney-Burgard state:

What appears here most “juvenile” or rather, let us say, less stripped of all else, is the acute awareness that she has of herself and of her vocation, an attitude which gives way to greater sobriety in the Letters.⁷

Recently, Saskia Murk-Jansen has proposed a different connection between the Visions and Hadewijch's other works. She theorizes that the Visions foreshadow a mystical union with God (the eighth and highest gift of Minne) that is fully expressed only in the Mengeldichten. This state is described but not detailed in the Visions as well as in the Letters. Murk-Jansen notes that the oldest manuscript begins with the Visions and ends with the Mengeldichten, suggesting a didactic function for this arrangement of texts. That is, each text describes a progressively more sophisticated spiritual stage. Therefore, for Murk-Jansen, the Visions do not represent this relatively more sophisticated spirituality, although they do recognize and enumerate its existence as that of “the eighth and highest gift of Love.”

Although Murk-Jansen does not believe that Hadewijch's other texts include examples of this “highest experience,” she states: “The mystic experience is not straightforwardly linear … without an unambiguous sequence towards a final stage.” Yet Murk-Jansen adds

Thus the texts ascribed to Hadewijch do not appear to include an example of what she describes as the highest experience, namely vercrighen in ontbliuen (attainment in absence). The only text approaching that is “Brief 28.” … Only the “Mengeldichten 17-24” concentrate on the stage in the service to Minne in which the soul joyfully expands in ontbliuen into the ultimate vercrighen. It could therefore be argued that, with “Brief 28,” the “Mengeldichten 17-24” complete the picture of mystic experience described in these manuscripts. They represent, according to Hadewijch's definition in “Visioen 13,” the highest stage of the mystic's quest for union with God.⁸

Murk-Jansen prefers the metaphor of a spiral, in which the mature insights characterized by ontbliuen (lack) bring renewed and deeper ecstatic experiences.⁹ Murk-Jansen insists, however, that the Mengeldichten “complete the picture.” The Visions, then, are incomplete without the Mengeldichten, if only for didactic purposes.

I propose that scholars drop their hierarchical and developmental approach and examine the Visions, together with Hadewijch's other works, as the products of a mature author. Unfortunately this hierarchical approach, which has dominated modern scholarship, is reinforced by assumptions that entail the denigration of visionary religious literature.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF VISIONS IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Paul Mommaers observes: “There is a risk that the Visions, simply on account of the word vision, may be treated a bit compassionately as a collection of texts about ecstasies, uncontrolled religious longing, and incomprehensible phantasms.”¹⁰ Why does the term “vision” provoke such a reaction in modern audiences? Although he does not share it, Mommaers is undoubtedly sensitive to the long history of scholarly contempt for the visionary state. Even where contempt is not present, many scholars carefully distinguish “contemplative” and “visionary” experiences. For example, Ninian Smart declares that

I consider that it is clearest if we use the term ‘mysticism’ and its relatives to refer to those inner visions and practices which are contemplative … This does not exclude outer visions, for a mystic may have more than mystical experiences, and he [sic] may interpret his own quest in terms of non-contemplative religion also.¹¹

Note that “outer visions” are non-contemplative and may even be non-mystical.

One of the most influential medieval theorists of visions was St. Augustine. For Augustine, visions were real occurrences and formed part of the range of cognitive experiences available to humans. As Frank Tobin explains:

Augustine formed medieval attitudes in two important ways. First, he defined the kinds of visions possible—corporeal, spiritual, and intellectual—and established their relative value. Second, he reduced to a minimum the differences between visions and normal cognitive experience. He did so, first of all, by capturing them both in a single word—visio. Visio is everyday cognitive seeing which is knowing in the true and full sense … but it is visions as well.

However, Tobin continues by noting that, for Augustine, the highest form of vision was intellectual:

When something is seen proprie, or without images, that is, without visio spiritualis, and when this occurs non per corpus, that is, without any connection to sensation, this is the highest form of vision.¹²

That is, the visions least connected to the body were, for Augustine, the most spiritual. But he did not deny that visions occurred.

For modern scholars, the problem with visions is both their physicality (in contrast to “inner vision,” which is thought be imageless), and their lack of “objective” verification. Therefore, they are easily dismissed as “less impressive” because they seem neither scientific nor spiritual. Steven Katz remarks that

There are major, perhaps insuperable, problems involved in the issue of trying to verify mystical claims, if by verification we mean the strong thesis that independent grounds for the claimed event/experience can be publicly demonstrated.¹³

Katz's reservations about mystical experiences in general have been even more strongly voiced with regard to visions. For example, Bruno Borchert states:

The line between fantasy and reality in the visionary language of mysticism was not drawn until the 18th century. Even then it was not drawn accurately, but it has helped us make a clearer distinction between the reality experienced by mystics and what is being studied in the occult sciences; also it has helped us understand visionary language in a new way: fantasy and reality go hand in hand. What is seen in visions is a creation of fantasy. The reality is to be sought in the experience itself.¹⁴

Note that Borchert's division between “fanstasy” and “reality” allows him to separate the vision from the religious experience, and to claim matter-of-factly that the experience is the reality, not the vision.

It is perhaps no coincidence that this binary model of inner contemplation (mind) and external vision (body) has a gender subtext. Medieval women religious writers, almost all of whom were visionaries, are consequently labelled “non-contemplative.” As Caroline Bynum has documented, this tendency to order religious experiences into “affective” (involving something which affects one, hence “outer”) and “contemplative” (within the mind, hence “inner”) categories, and thereby to disparage the visionary experience, persists in more recent scholarship.¹⁵ Part of the reason for this distinction could be the fact that in the Middle Ages intellectual contemplation was the province of the dominant group, literate men, while visions were primarily experienced and reported by less powerful groups, especially women. The privileged group's religious experiences continued to be better appreciated until quite recently because literate men continue to dominate the academy. Thus, scholarly denigration of visions elevates the religious status of those who practice theoretical contemplation. The long history of neglect of medieval women's religious texts is a silent indictment of the poverty of this approach.

The gendered dichotomy of vision and contemplation overlooks a basic point: why should visions be presumed to involve the body while contemplation does not? Since all religious experiences is had by embodied persons, this distinction is completely artificial. Religious experiences are necessarily multidimensional. Even the term “vision” is somewhat of a misnomer, because in Hadewijch's experiences she includes the sensory realm of touch, hearing, and taste, as well as mental states that could be described as “abodily” (the experiences of being “out of the senses,” as Hadewijch puts it).

It is also important to note that the recording of visionary experiences must necessarily occur after the fact. Although visions may be spontaneous, written visionary literature is not. An appreciation of medieval visionary literature as a genre is a hallmark of one type of contemporary feminist scholarship. These recent studies of visionary writers stress both the complexity of visionary literature and, perhaps even more importantly, its role as a vehicle for the empowerment of individual women. Visionary abilities allowed some women an authoritative voice that was denied them by the institutional church.¹⁶

There is compelling evidence that Hadewijch's written Visions are indeed works of literature (and, I would add, performance art), carefully crafted in several stages. First, the immediate vision may have been quite diffuse (that is, not ordered sequentially nor occurring in dialogic form—Hadewijch often mentions being “out of her senses”). Over time, the immediate experience was probably shaped according to available symbolic “maps,” and finally, Hadewijch may have meditated upon and interpreted the imagery contained in the emerging written Vision. Hadewijch's Visions synthesize these processes into a complex finished product. Her written Visions have temporal sequencing, dialogues between herself and a revelatory agent, and, often, detailed reflections (apart from the vision) which explain imagery, metaphors, or Hadewijch's own feelings.¹⁷ Thus, the Visions are a distinct literary genre, as polished in their format as a scholastic treatise is in its own context. As Mommaers notes, it is incorrect to view them as “uncontrolled” outpourings.

FEMINIST THEORIES ABOUT THE BODY

The relationship of body and spirit is important in the study of medieval religious women's experiences for two reasons: first, medieval women were assumed to be “more bodily” than men, and second, medieval “visionary” experiences tended to have more physical dimensions (involving sight and touch, for example) than those described in “contemplative” religious experiences. Recent feminist theory has focused on the ways in which such ideas and judgments are connected to cultural constructs of the body, gender, and religious experience in different historical periods.¹⁸ For instance, Karma Lochrie points to the medieval “taboo” against the female body:

The medieval taboo governing the female body and the feminine flesh also governs medieval and modern hierarchies of mystical experience and language. One cannot even engage in the study of medieval mysticism without encountering the taboo of the female body transformed into arguments about metaphorical versus literal sensual language.¹⁹

One important aspect of this medieval taboo on the female body is the importance of the sealed body in the Middle Ages. Karma Lochrie and Laurie Finke have both written persuasively about the medieval assumption that the ideal body was closed and intact.²⁰ This relatively intact body, or “classical body,” was identified with maleness. A corollary of this medieval belief was that women's bodies (which literally leak the fluids of blood and milk) were inherently inferior because they were especially prone to “openness.” Examples of clerical attempts to insure a degree of women's intactness included the prescription of physical virginity as well as the spatial enclosure of nuns.

Elizabeth Robertson's analysis of medieval medical theory adds to this association of women with porosity and fluidity. As Robertson explains, because Galen's theory of humors associated moisture and cold with earth, women were assumed to be more earthly, and thus more “bodily,” than men. Men embodied the qualities of dryness and heat associated with the spirit and with intellect. Robertson speculates that writings by and for women in the Middle Ages may have assumed that spirituality for women was naturally centered in the body. Robertson's conclusion that Julian of Norwich's writings celebrate women's fluidity has important implications for the study of Hadewijch's works.²¹

A fruitful avenue of inquiry into women's religious experience is the degree to which medieval visionary experiences centers upon the open, female body, and whether or not this experience is gendered. From the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries, the increasing spiritual emphasis upon Christ's humanity, and particularly upon his open, bleeding body, provided an avenue for a new type of Christian spirituality. Although men and women writers alike championed this new spirituality, the proliferation of women-authored works is quite striking.²² Hadewijch of Antwerp was one of those writers. As will be demonstrated, one of the characteristics of Hadewijch's writings is that the open body is openly celebrated.

VISIONS “5” AND “7”: EMBODIMENT AND MYSTICAL UNION

Michael Sells states “the moment in which the boundaries between divine and human, self and other, melt away is commonly called mystical union.” He asserts that “mystical” texts attempt to describe this union through a “discourse of unsaying”, that is, by “perform[ing] … a referential openness” through techniques that disorient “standard rules of reference and antecedence.” Sells notes that three key features of this discourse are (1) metaphors of overflowing; (2) dis-ontological discursive effort (or “unsaying” what has been said in order to avoid reifying what has been said into a “thing”; and (3) a distinctive dialectic of transcendence and immanence in which the transcendent is revealed as the immanent.²³

Hadewijch's “Vision 5”—which tells of her mystical union with the divine—contains all three features. Hadewijch asks God directly: “Why do you not flow through them in our oneness?” Notice how “flowing” conveys the abolition of boundaries between the self and God (“our oneness”). In Hadewijch's works, all the seals are broken; God and mystic flow together.²⁴

This abolition of boundaries is also conveyed by sudden shifts in pronoun use (a characteristic of all of Hadewijch's works). Sells' claims that “disontological discourse,” disrupts or “opens” the text by “transforming the spatial and temporal structures of language at the level of article, pronoun, and preposition.”²⁵ Hadewijch shifts from a dialogic stance with divinity (“You took my self”) to a more impersonal third person referent for God (“And he took me”). The confusion resulting from these pronoun shifts blurs the boundaries between the speaker and God.

“Vision 5” uses the imagery of the body to reveal the transcendent as immanent:

Then you took my self into yourself and gave me to know how you are. … And he took me out of the spirit in that highest enjoyment (ghebruken) of wonder beyond reason; there I enjoyed him as I will eternally.²⁶

The term ghebruken or gebrukelecheit, translated by Hart as “fruition”, is more appropriately translated “enjoyment” or “satisfaction.”²⁷ One of Hadewijch's most important religious insights (and an influential aspect of Minnemystik thought) is that physical and religious “enjoyment” are not dichotomized. Therefore, throughout her works she freely mixes intellectual verbs for union with God (“knowing”, “understanding”) with sensory (and sensual) terms such as “satisfaction”, “touch”, and “taste.” “Poem 16” of the Mengeldichten describes this embodied mystical experience: “By this he made known to us / That love's most intimate union / Is through eating, tasting, and seeing from within.”²⁸ In “Vision 1” Hadewijch declares her intent to know God in both his humanity and in his divinity.²⁹ This intention is repeated in “Letter 6”:

With the humanity of God you must live here, in the labors and sorrows of exile, while with the powerful eternal God must you love and rejoice within in a sweet comfort. For the truth of both is one single satisfaction (ghebruken). And just as the humanity pledged itself on earth to the will of the Majesty, you must here with Love pledge yourself to both in one.³⁰

I believe Hadewijch's decision to know God bodily, i.e. “in his humanity,” constitutes an embrace of abjection. Karma Lochrie has utilized the French theorist Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection in her analysis of medieval constructions of the body. According to Kristeva, the abject is neither a constructed subject nor a constructed object (upon which identity depends). Thus, it is normally experienced as a “fear and revulsion precipitated by the loss of boundaries of the subject.” Furthermore, abjection is bound to the sacred in the form of taboos. Lochrie believes that “the taboos of Christianity attempt to prohibit the abject by protecting the boundaries of the body.”³¹ However, in Christian doctrine the abject is internalized within the body as a result of original sin. Thus the Christian is continually threatened by abjection. Yet in the thirteenth century the Christian was also called upon to imitate Christ's life (and for some, his human experience of abjection). In order to experience God “in his humanity” the body serves as the connection to divinity, and divinity itself is somehow human (through the enfleshed god, Christ). By making the body, particularly the open, female body, the site of rupture in which mystical union is performed, Hadewijch (and other medieval female writers) created a new discourse of mysticism.³²

Hadewijch's “new” discourse of mysticism does not impose or even imply a dichotomy of body/soul. Hadewijch's Visions and poetry are confusing because, like many mystical texts of “unsaying,” they destabilize such dichotomies. By freely using all the human modes of communication Hadewijch upsets the hierarchy that privileges the intellectual over sensory experiences. Moreover, her works do not invert the hierarchy (by privileging the sensory), but confuse and disorient hierarchies in order to con-textualize (perform) the moment in which transcendent and immanent fuse. After all, for Hadewijch, echoing William of St. Thierry, the goal of mystical union is to become “what God is.”³³

The theme of a complete, embodied religious experience is more explicit in “Vision 7,” which relates an experience of union during reception of the Eucharist. Hadewijch describes her desire “to taste him [God] to the full,” with “nothing withheld.” She visualizes God coming from the altar in the shape of a man, who took her in his arms and pressed her to him: “all my limbs felt his in all their pleasure as my heart had desired.” These erotic images set the stage for unity: “I could no longer recognize or perceive him outside me, and within me there was no separation. Then it was to me as if we were one without difference.”³⁴

In this Vision the dissolution of boundaries clearly implies an embodied experience. In this regard it is very striking that the phrase een sonder differencie (“one without difference”), later altered by Jan van Ruusbroec to mean the pinnacle of a supreme, imageless mystical experience, occurs in the context of an embodied experience through which distinctions and dichotomies are dissolved. There is absolutely no indication, either here or anywhere else in her writings, that this embodied experience represents a “lower” stage of religious experience. Rather, this synthesizing approach informs all of Hadewijch's works. For example, “Letter 9” extols the state in which God and human “enjoy one another, mouth and mouth, heart and heart, body and body, soul and soul, while one sweet godly nature flows through them both.”³⁵

“Poem 23” of the Mengeldichten declares that “in that hour one loses image, form, and distinction.”³⁶ “Poem 23” is not considered to be one of Hadewijch's poems, because the second half of the Mengeldichten is thought to be more “abstract” and “intellectual” than Hadewjch's other works. Yet this poem clearly echoes the loss of image and form (“one without difference”) described in the erotic language of “Vision 7.” Without an a priori conception of “losing image, form, and distinction” as a purely intellectual event, it is difficult to understand the rationale for depicting “Poem 23” as more “abstract” than Hadewijch's other works, especially the Visions. Indeed, Hadewijch's elaboration of the body as a site of connection with divinity undermines the dichotomy of intellect/body that informs this judgment regarding the authorship of the second half of the Mengeldichten.

“VISION 9”: QUEEN REASON

In this vision Hadewijch sees a heavenly being whom she calls “Queen Reason.” The vision takes place on the day of Mary's Nativity as Hadewijch is meditating on the Song of Songs. Hadewijch reports that she had been moved by “the words of love,” and that she had been thinking of “a complete kiss.” Love in all its aspects thus served as the prelude to this vision.

Hadewijch declares: “I saw in the spirit a queen come in, clad in a gold dress; and her dress was all full of eyes; and all the eyes were completely transparent, like fiery flames, and nevertheless like crystal.”³⁷ Three maidens walked before the queen. The first maiden, dressed in a red cloak, blew two trumpets, each of which proclaimed that those who follow this queen will be led to Love. The second maiden, dressed in a green cloak, held palm branches in her hands, each of which was “sealed with a book.” The third maiden was dressed in a black cloak and had a lantern “full of days” by which the Queen “saw the deepness of the depths, and the height of the highest flight.” At this point Queen Reason puts her foot on Hadewijch's throat and demands that Hadewijch tell her who she is. Undismayed, Hadewijch replies:

Yes, indeed! Long enough have you caused me woe and pain! You are the reason of my soul, and these are the officials of my own household with whom you parade about. … The trumpeter: my Holy Fear … the second [one] is that distinction between you and Love … and the third is Wisdom … through whom I learned to know God alone [as] God and God [as] God of all things, and each thing as God, as when in the spirit I am united with that [God].³⁸

“Vision 9” provides another excellent illustration of the unity of Hadewijch's religious expression. The imagery of Love and Reason in “Vision 9” is a key to understanding these concepts in her Letters and in the Mengeldichten. Reason, according to Hadewijch, is an important first step in the religious experience, but is surpassed by Love, which is superior to Reason because it encompasses all qualities. Thus, Hadewijch posits a hierarchy but again subverts it because Love's apparent superiority lies in its integration of all attributes, including Reason. Reason's role is to establish limits, as Hadewijch explains in “Letter 11”: “Reason made me know well that I was not close to him, but the chains of love that I felt did not lead me to feel or believe this.”³⁹

Love, on the other hand, abolishes all limits. Therefore, on occasion it appears that Reason is necessarily opposed to Love, as Hadewijch writes in “Letter 20”: “What belongs to Reason is altogether against the true nature of Love … for the true reason [language, nature] of Love, that is a growing flood without peace or respite.”⁴⁰ However, note the play on words: “the true reason (redene) of love.” Redene can mean “reason”, “language”, and/or “nature.” Thus, in “Letter 20” Hadewijch subtly incorporates reason even as she apparently negates it!

Two important images throughout Hadewijch's works are those of “fieriness” and adornment. The burning nature of Love is a recurrent theme in the Letters and the Mengeldichten. For example, “Letter 22” extols “burning Love” and notes that “complete love is a fire: they [mystics] burn in order to satisfy him [God].”⁴¹ “Poem 16” of the Mengeldichten describes how “with the coal she [Love] sets the two aflame, and with the fire she burns them into one”, and then declares:

By the dew the fire is calmed
And salved with a unifying wind
The bliss and the madness [of love]
Then throw them into the deepest Flood.(42)

In Galenic and medieval medical terminology heat and flood were contrasting qualities (heat and dryness vs. cold and moisture). Yet in this poem, dew, fire and flood are all aspects of divinity. In “Vision 5,” God “flows through in our oneness.” In “Vision 9,” Hadewijch instead emphasizes the fieriness of divinity.

The concept of holy adornment also recurs in the Letters and the Mengeldichten. For example, “Letter 30” declares:

The one who wishes to clothe himself … and to be one with the Godhead, must adorn himself with all the virtues, just as God did himself with clothing and adornment when he lived as Man.⁴³

Similarly, “Poem 18” commands the reader to “Seize what clothes you!”, an enigmatic statement which makes sense only in light of “Vision 9.” Further, “Poem 28” explains that Love “brings the adornment which she reveals to me.”⁴⁴ The concept of adornment in these works is enhanced by the vivid description of Queen Reason's adornment in “Vision 9.” Queen Reason explains that it is Hadewijch who has adorned her: “And she [Reason] said, ‘It is true, with this eye-covered dress you yourself are adorned, and you have clothed me with heavenliness.’”⁴⁵ Once again, Hadewijch confuses the boundaries between the vision she describes (Reason) and herself. Hadewijch is both the adorner and the adorned, as is the heavenly figure of Reason. In this dialogue of “unsaying”, Reason both controls and is controlled by Hadewijch, and to some extent, Hadewijch is Reason.

Hadewijch eventually surpasses Reason: ‘then Reason became subject to me, and I left her.” Thereupon, “Love came and embraced me, and I came out of the spirit and remained lying until late in the day, drunk with unspeakable wonders.”⁴⁶ Thus, in “Vision 9” Hadewijch surpasses Reason and enters into the sacred realm of Minne (Love), which leads to union with God. Given its stylized features, this vision could be a post hoc justification for the Beguine emphasis on Minne. Nevertheless, it is striking that the superiority and all-encompassing aspects of Minne (Love), one of Hadewijch's most important ideas, is explained in this Vision with the depth and multivalence that characterizes her descriptions of Minne in her other works. In fact, Hadewijch's interpretation of the relationship between Love and Reason in “Vision 9” enhances one's understanding of these concepts elsewhere.

Perhaps most surprisingly, all of the characters in this spiritual drama are women: Hadewijch, Queen Reason, and Minne (the aspect of divinity with which Hadewijch is “embraced” at the end of the Vision). In contrast to “Visions 5” and “7,” where union is described using the heterosexual paradigm of (female-human) beloved and (male-divine) lover, “Vision 9” uses an all-women paradigm for the same experience. In effect, she “unsays” the earlier visions to produce a different dialogue with divinity.

“VISION 13”: HUMILITY, UNFAITH, THE DIVINE TOUCH, AND THE COUNTENANCE OF GOD

Although “Vision 13” is the penultimate Vision, in many ways it is the culmination of the written Visions.⁴⁷ Here Hadewijch explores and destabilizes the meanings of the virtues of humility, faith, hope, and love. In this Vision Hadewijch is raised to the highest heaven, where God “made Love known to me; until that hour, she had been hidden from me.”⁴⁸ In this highest heaven, an “Appearance of God” (aanschijn van gode) is revealed.⁴⁹ According to Hadewijch, this particular manifestation of God is what the saints see in eternity. It had six wings, which appeared to be closed, “but within they were flying at all times.”⁵⁰ The six-winged countenance and the imagery of closed and opened wings are derived from Isaiah's description of the Seraphim who attend God's throne, and from Ezekiel's vision of the four creatures who carry God's throne.⁵¹

Each pair of wings represents an aspect of relating to God. The pair of highest wings “flew in the height in which God enjoys the highest power of love;” the pair of middle wings “flew in the wideness of complete ways of loving;” and the pair of lowest wings “flew in the fathomless depth in which he engulfs all beings.”⁵² Thus the three pairs of wings encompass God in three dimensions: height, width, and depth.

Hadewijch next describes a crowd of spirits around the Appearance. These spirits have “conquered in love so that they are conquered like the unconquerable power of growing Love.”⁵³ “Conquering Love” is a Minnemystik idea featured in all of Hadewijch's works. For example, “Letter 30” urges the reader “from unconquered power to be able to be strong and unconquered and joyful … and so to enjoy one full-grown love.”⁵⁴ Similarly, “Poem 24” of the Mengeldichten discusses “those whom love holds—who have begun and who have conquered.”⁵⁵ In all three works the mystic is vanquished by Love and yet remains, paradoxically, unvanquished. The confusion of meaning generated by paradox is another example of Hadewijch's technique of “unsaying.”

Hadewijch then details the characteristics of each of the three pairs of wings. First, the pair of middle wings opens, and Hadewijch perceives Love, enthroned as a queen on a seat “in the eyes” of the Appearance. Love bestows embraces and kisses but her eyes flash “swords of fiery flames”, and from her mouth issue “lightning and thunder.”⁵⁶ At this point Hadewijch asks the guiding Seraph to open the pairs of highest and lowest wings. It is revealed that the pair of highest wings enclose those spirits “who had been annihilated in humility”, and whose songs resound throughout the height, width, and depth of the Appearance. These spirits become united with Love:

In the depths of Love so came also a welling-up which sprang up and welled up there with new storms to fill the new arrivals that burn there. These adorned spirits came with high instructions before Love … and in an instant these spirits were adorned with the same form that adorned Love.⁵⁷

The theme of complete humility is a traditional Minnemystik motif which Hadewijch incorporates in all her works.⁵⁸ Yet, in “Vision 13” humility is not the apex of moral virtue, because Hadewijch states that the pair of lowest wings contains those souls who have transcended humility:

These were they who, in the freedom of love between them and their Beloved, had cast off humility … They realized that they were so near the truth of Love and so high above themselves that they knew nothing of themselves but that they knew nothing before Love.⁵⁹

Thus, “Vision 13” exalts humility and exhibits an extraordinary degree of self-promotion. For example, when Hadewijch sees the terrifying depiction of Love, a Seraph tells her that Love had never been shown before to any created being. Moreover, “Vision 13” explicitly elevates Hadewijch above even the Virgin Mary. According to the Seraph, Mary understood the highest heaven depicted in this Vision only indirectly, through her association with her son.⁶⁰ Zum Brunn and Épiney-Burgard rebuke this self-promotion on the part of Hadewijch's by assigning the Visions to Hadewijch's youth: “What appears most ‘juvenile’ … is the acute awareness that she has of herself.”⁶¹

Hadewijch's statements in “Vision 13” are more comprehensible (and less “juvenile”) if one considers Hadewijch's coupling of her unique concept of pride (fierheit) with the virtue of humility. In the Middle Ages pride was universally condemned as one of the deadliest of sins.⁶² Hadewijch acknowledges the medieval opposition of pride to humility, but proposes another kind of pride which is entirely positive. Hadewijch calls the true mystics “the proud souls” and declares of them that their “work is proud.” Love itself, according to Hadewijch, “is without material substance with the richer freedom of God … and [is] working with pride.”⁶³

According to Hadewijch's “Letter 20” (and also reflected in “Vision 13”), true humility is not self-conscious: “Love makes his memory so united that he can no longer think of saints, nor of people … nor of heaven, nor of earth, nor of angels, nor of himself, nor of God.”⁶⁴ In this regard it is informative to refer to “Poem 14” of the Mengeldichten, which elaborates the stages of Love's growth. In that poem, humility engenders the other stages of love's growth. It is not the apex; one does not remain in complete self-abasement. In “Poem 2” Hadewijch says of woman: “Her humility was so great / that she summoned the King to come to her / she was the strongest, that is well known.”⁶⁵ Significantly, in “Poem 14” “confidence” (not complete self-lowering) is one of the stages of religious maturity, leading eventually to “wisdom,” which “wholly engulfs all from within.”⁶⁶ This confidence in “all nobility and pride” allows one to “fear nothing and omit nothing.”⁶⁷

Like other medieval writers, Hadewijch exalts the virtue of humility. However, in her works humility engenders pride and confidence. This pride allows the mystic to seek depths of religious experience that are too frightening for ordinary humans. There is an intertwined relationship between pride, “high confidence” and humility. Thus, Hadewijch's vivid depictions of humility and pride in “Vision 13,” far from being “juvenile,” are part of a consistent philosophy that is integrated throughout her other works. Once again Hadewijch's writings destabilize a traditional dichotomy—in this case, pride and humility.⁶⁸

“Vision 13” continues with a description of the spirits contained in the pair of lowest wings belonging to the Appearance. This group of spirits possessed not only the seven gifts of love, but an eighth gift, never before revealed, the gift of “divine touch.”⁶⁹Gerenen (“touch”) and ghebruken (“enjoyment”) are central themes in both the Letters and the Mengeldichten. For example, “Letter 3” describes all the ways in which humans can “touch” God. “Poem 19” of the Mengeldichten explains that in the desert of mystical experience one cannot “touch” reason.⁷⁰ This statement affirms the insight of “Vision 13”: “the eighth [gift] is the Divine Touch of satisfaction, which does away with everything that belongs to reason.”⁷¹ The idea that the “divine touch” transcends the bounds of reason and is the apex of the religious experience is thus interwoven throughout Hadewijch's works. Paradoxically, in “Vision 13” this “apex” is experienced through the two lowest wings.

According to Hadewijch, the special souls belonging to the lowest wings were so “annihilated” they did not realize that they had received this eighth gift. Hadewijch calls this condition of annihilation ontrouwe, “unfaith,” which, paradoxically, is the noblest state of all:

Unfaith made them so deep that they wholly engulfed Love and went against her with sweet and bitter. That which Love gives turns bitter and is consumed and swallowed up. That which she takes is enriched by great strength from the satisfaction of Love's demand to be great in all hours like herself, so that all God's skill cannot separate them.⁷²

Engulfment in the depths of God/Minne, which is central to Hadewijch's mysticism, is another concept that recurs throughout her works. In fact, “Vision 13” concludes with the statement: “And I sank into the fathomless depth, and came out of the spirit in that hour, of which one can never speak at all.”⁷³ The positive value attributed to being swallowed up in divinity surely destabilizes the notion of apexes, not to mention those of boundaries and intactness. Yet it is “unfaith”, not “faith” that leads one into this desired state. The text disorients by “unsaying” the traditional virtue of faith and the positive attribute of control over one's body.

Although Hadewijch never defines what she means by “unfaith,” she extols it in her other works. For example, “Letter 8” declares: “This noble unfaith makes consciousness so wide”, while “Poem 10” of the Mengeldichten states: “Fidelity must often be absent / so that unfaith can conquer.”⁷⁴ Just as humility is connected to pride (its traditional opposite), faith is connected to unfaith.

Hadewijch's insights about faith and humility are illuminated by her descriptions of hope and despair. In “Vision 13” Hadewijch declares that the creatures within the lowest wings, who were “so annihilated,” did not believe that Love would respond to them: “It appeared to them that they were alone in loving and that Love did not help them.”⁷⁵ In this Vision, this despair is part of what Hadewijch means by “unfaith,” but elsewhere she describes it by another name, unthopen, or “despair.” For example, in “Letter 22,” Hadewijch states:

Here they condemn themselves every hour. All that they speak and work and serve seems to them of no use, and their spirit does not believe that it can attain that greatness. Thus they keep their hearts beyond hope. This way leads them very deep into God, for their great despair leads them above all the ramparts and through all the passageways, and into all the true places.⁷⁶

Also featured throughout her Letters and poetry is the related theme (derived from troubador poetry) of the bitterness and capriciousness of Love. For example, “Poem 16” of the Mengeldichten describes Hell as the highest state of Love attainable by humans:

As Hell ruins all
And one does not acquire in her
[Anything] but disquiet and strong pain;
Forever to be in unrest,
Forever storm and new persecution;
To be wholly engulfed and devoured
In her fathomless nature.(77)

Hadewijch's writings thus destabilize the meaning of the virtues (humility, faith, hope, and love/God) by paradoxically locating their opposites within them (pride, unfaith, despair, and bitterness/Hell) and elevating (lowering?) those qualities. The written version of “Vision 13” is a carefully crafted work of art which uses familiar symbols in a context that completely “unsays” them.

CONCLUSION

This comparative analysis of Hadewijch's Visions with her Letters and the Mengeldichten demonstrates that Hadewijch's Visions cannot be dismissed as an early phase of her religious life. Both the careful crafting of the Visions themselves and the many references to this material in her other works indicate that visionary experiences formed an important part of Hadewijch's mysticism throughout her religious life. Indeed, the Letters, the Visions, and the Mengeldichten are deeply interconnected. Therefore, the religious experiences described in the Visions do not represent a naive, sensual religiosity as compared to the supposedly more mature, abstract meditations of the Letters or the Mengeldichten. No work in the collection supports such a classificatory scheme.

The integration of Hadewijch's ideas across her writings has another dimension that is perhaps even more important. If all of Hadewijch's works contain sensory, intellectual, and symbolic components, then we cannot use a developmental model to outline the progress of Hadewijch's ideas. Moreover, it is illogical to dismiss as inauthentic certain works (such as the second half of the Mengeldichten) simply on the grounds that they have more of a Platonist tone than do other works in the collection. We need to be aware of the taboo on the body as a site for “performing” divinity that drives this dichotomizing model.

Finally, it is not useful to posit any hierarchical schema with which to evaluate Hadewijch's ideas. All of Hadewijch's works destabilize hierarchies—at the level of disorienting pronouns and references, at the level of clerical virtues such as faith and humility, at the metaphorical level of erotic paradigms for understanding the relationship between God and humans, and at the ontological level where the transcendent becomes immanent. At virtually every critical point of reference the texts turn back upon themselves in an endless dialogue of “unsaying.” Significantly, Hadewijch's texts explore and celebrate the female body as a site for performing this dialogue of unsaying. Contemporary feminists are often repulsed by the self-abnegation, involvement in suffering, and extreme behavior found in the texts of medieval women such as those of Catherine of Siena, Margery Kempe, and Angela Foligno. Understanding Hadewijch's works from a feminist perspective that critiques hierarchy and emphasizes empowerment and creativity offers contemporary feminists a way to appreciate Hadewijch's and other women writers' achievements. The great achievement of Beguine writers in general, and of Hadewijch in particular, was the empowering assertion that the experiences of the whole human, and specifically those of the whole woman, are sites for connection with God. Hadewijch's Visions are a powerful display of this liberating discourse of mysticism.

Notes

1. Almost nothing is known about Hadewijch's life. It is clear that she was acquainted with Latin and French, thus she was extremely well-educated even for a Beguine. As a Beguine, Hadewijch probably lived in a self-sufficient community of religious women who took no vows of obedience, neither to a husband nor to the Church. Beguines first appeared in the late twelfth century and by 1216 had obtained papal approval for their way of life. Until their condemnation in 1310 they were a widespread religious movement in the Low Countries and Central Europe (Beguines in the Southern Low Countries continued to flourish long after 1310). The standard work on Beguines is still Ernest McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture: With Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New Brunswick: Octagon Books, 1954). More recently, Walter Simons' “The Beguine Movement in the Southern Low Countries: A Reassessment” Bulletin de l'institut historique belge de Rome 59 (1989), 63-105, has addressed the development of the Beguine movement in that area. See also Carol Neel “The Origins of the Beguines” in Judith M. Bennett, et. al., ed., Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 240-260.

2. The citations from Hadewijch's works are my translations of J. van Mierlo's editions of Hadewijch's works: Hadewijch: Brieven, 2 vols. (Antwerp: N. V. Standard Boekhandel, 1947); Hadewijch: Visionen, 2 vols. (Louvain: S. V. de Vlaamsche Boekenhalle, 1924); Hadewijch: Mengeldichten (Antwerp: N. V. Standard Boekhandel, 1952). Citations from these editions indicate volume, line numbers and page numbers, in that order. The reader may also consult Mother Columba Hart's translation, Hadewijch: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).

3. See Stephen Axters, “Hadewijch als Voorloopster van de Zalige Jan van Ruusbroec,” in A. Ampe, ed., Dr. L. Reypens-Album (Antwerpen: Ruusbroec-Genootschap, 1964), 57-74, and Dom Porion, Hadewijch d'Anvers (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1954).

4. Hadewijch's collection of poems in couplets, called the Mengeldichten, presents a problem for students of her works. The second half of the collection (Poems 17-29) are considered by nearly all scholars to be the work of a later writer. At present, only S. M. Murk-Jansen and myself disagree. Murk-Jansen argues that at least Poems 17-24 are the work of Hadewijch, and indeed, represent her most insightful work (Murk-Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hadewijch's Mengeldichten [Göppingen: Kümmerle-Verlag, 1991]). My 1993 doctoral thesis argues for Hadewijch's authorship of the entire Mengeldichten (M. Suydam, Hadewijch of Antwerp and the Mengeldichten, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1993). However, in deference to the majority view, this article contains citations from both sections of the Mengeldichten.

5. Hadewijch declares at the beginning of “Vision 1” that she was still “too childish … and had not lived the number of years requisite for such worthiness”, and in “Vision 6” that she was only 19 years old at the time of that particular vision (Visioenen, volume 1, lines 9-12, 9-10, and lines 1-2; page 65). These and other similar statements indicate that most of the visionary experiences recorded in the Visions occurred when Hadewijch was young.

6. See van Mierlo's comments in Hadewijch: Brieven, v. 2, pages 19-20. For example, in the written Visions Hadewijch repeatedly draws attention to the fact that she will later on be exposed to earthly ridicule, comments which could have resulted from interpretation of the visions in light of subsequent events.

7. Emilie Zum Brunn and Georgette Épiney-Burgard, Women Mystics in Medieval Europe (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 102. The authors comment favorably, however, on the “depth and maturity” of Hadewijch's Visions.

8. S. M. Murk-Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hadewijch's Mengeldichten, 166, 164-65.

9. Personal communication, May 1993.

10. Quoted in Mommaer's introduction to Mother Columba Hart's Hadewijch: The Complete Works, xx-xxi.

11. Ninian Smart, “Understanding Religious Experience”, in Steven Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 13.

12. Frank Tobin, “Medieval Thoughts on Visions,” in Vox Mystica: Essays for Valerie M. Lagorio, ed. Anne Clark Bartlett, Thomas Bestul, Janet Goebel and William Pollard (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), 47, 43.

13. Steven Katz, “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,” in Steven Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, 22.

14. Bruno Borchert, Mysticism: Its History and Challenge (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1994), 61.

15. Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 181-238.

16. Two good introductions to this new approach to visionary literature are Peter Dronke's Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (+203) to Marguerite Porete (+1310) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), and Elizabeth Petroff, ed., Medieval Women's Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Examples of this type of scholarship applied to individual medieval visionaries are Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Anne L. Clark, Elizabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992); and Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).

17. For example, “Vision 11,” an account of a vision of St. Augustine, concludes with an essay explaining Hadewijch's dissatisfaction with this particular revelatory agent; Hadewijch: Visioenen, v. 1, lines 72-203, 114-122.

18. There is a growing quantity of literature on this subject. In addition to works cited in this section, studies that are pertinent to the medieval period are Caroline Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), and Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Elizabeth Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Susan Suleiman, ed., The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); Ulrike Wiethaus, ed., Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993), and “Sexuality, Gender, and the Body in Late Medieval Women's Spirituality,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (Spring 1991): 35-52.

19. Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, 6.

20. Lochrie, “The Language of Transgression: Body, Flesh and Word in Mystical Discourse,” in Allen J. Frantzen, ed., Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (Albany: State University of New York Press: 1991), 124-129; Laurie Finke, Feminist Theory, Women's Writing (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992), 84-94. Finke uses Mikhail Bahktin's description of “classical” and “grotesque” bodies to characterize medieval attitudes towards male and female bodies, respectively. Lochrie points out that, of course, all bodies are corrupt, but that women's bodies, being more pervious, were thought to be more corrupt than men's: “Woman was the ‘heaving powers of the flesh’, the place of disruption” (“Language of Transgression,” 127).

21. Elizabeth Robertson, “Medieval Medical Views of Women and Female Spirituality in the Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich's Showings,” in Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury, eds., Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 158-162. See also Karma Lochrie, “The Language of Transgression,” 124-6.

22. It is surely no accident that many pioneers of this new spirituality were women writers such as Beatrice of Nazareth, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe. Moreover, the Feast of Corpus Christi was established and promoted by a Beguine, Juliana of Cornillon. Caroline Bynum states: “Thus, many medieval assumptions linked woman and flesh and the body of God” (Fragmentation and Redemption, 101).

23. Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 7, 12, 6.

24. Visoenen, v. 1, l. 17-18; 59: Ende waer omme en doervloystuse in onse enecheit niet? This theme of (over)flowing is also reflected in “Letter 22”: “He rests in nothing but the violent Nature of his profusely overflowing flood, which floods all and overflows,” Brieven, v. 1, l. 252-255; 198: Want hine rustet in ghene dinc dan in die druusteghe nature siere vloyender vloedegher vloede, die al omme ende al overvloyen.

25. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 8.

26. Visoenen, v.1, l. 52-65; 61-2: Doen ghi mi seluen in v seluen naemt, ende daet mi weten hoe ghedaen ghi sijt … Ende hi nam mi op buten den gheeste in dat ouerste ghebruken van wondere sonder redene; daer ghebroekic sijns alsic eweleke sal.

27. Giles Milhaven also argues this point. See Hadewijch and Her Sisters: Other Ways of Loving and Knowing (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), 29.

28. Mengeldichten, l. 36-38; 79: Daer bi dedi ons te wetenne / dat dat ware die naeste der minnen / dore eten, dore smaken, dore sien van binnen.

29. In that Vision God declares to Hadewijch: “If you wish to be like me in humanity as you wish to enjoy me in divinity” (Wiltu mi gheliken inder menscheit alse du beghers inder gotheit als te ghebrukene van mi, Visioenen, v. 1, l. 289-9; 27).

30. Brieven, v. 1, l. 117-124; 58-9: Metter menscheit gods suldi hier leuen in aerbeide ende in ellenden, ende metten moghenden eweleken god suldi Minnen ende Jubileren van binnen met enen sueten toeuerlate. Ende haere beider waerheit es een enich ghebruken. Ende alsoe alse die menscheit hier plach dies willen der maiesteit, also seldi hier met Minnen haerre beider willen in een pleghen.

31. See Karma Lochrie, “Language of Transgression,” 128; Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). Like Kristeva, she further defines the abject as that which “does not respect borders, positions, rules.”

32. See Rosemary Hale, “‘Taste and See, for God is Sweet’: Sensory Perception and Memory in Medieval Christian Mystical Practice,” in Bartlett, et. al., eds., Vox Mystica: Essays for Valerie M. Lagorio, 3-14, for a discussion of male and female religious approaches to the sensorium. Hale states: “The critical difference lies in the fact that while a woman mystic physically embodies the experience, the male mystic first ingests the Eucharistic host and then recalls the discourse between the divine and his ‘female’ soul” (10).

33. See “Letter 2” in Brieven, v. 1, l. 163-5; 31: “If you wish to conquer, you should give yourself up in confidence to God in order to become what he is” (Wildi al dat uwe vercrighen, soe suldi v seluen in toeuerlate gode al op gheuen te werdene dat hi es).

34. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 22-3, 31; 75: te ghesmakene in allen uollen ghereke, and l. 31; 75: sonder ontbliuen, “without [anything] lacking”); l. 76-78; 78: ende alle die lede die ic hadde gheuoelden der siere in alle hare ghenoeghen na miere herten begherten. Hart translates: “All my members felt his in full felicity” (Hart, Hadewijch, 281). Visioenen, v. 1, l. 85-89; 78: Soe dat icken buten mi niet en conste bekinnen noch vernemen, ende binnen mi niet besceden. Mi was op die vre ochte wi een waren sonder differencie.

35. Brieven, v. 1, l. 8-12; 79-80: Mer si ghebruken onderlinghe ende elc anderen mont in mont, ende herte in herte, ende lichame ende lichame, ende ziele en ziele, ende ene soete godlike nature doer hen beiden vloyende.. …

36. Mengeldichten, l. 22-24; 124: Si verliest te diere vre / beelde ende figuere / ende ondersceit.

37. Visionen, v. 1, l. 7-11; 95: Soe saghic inden gheeste dat quam ene coninghinne ghecleedt met enen guldenen clede; ende dat cleet was al vol oghen; ende alle die oghen waren alle doersiende alse viereghe vlammen, ende nochtan ghelijc cristalle. The imagery is reminscent of Ezekiel's vision of the chariot, which was also described as full of eyes, and as both fiery and crystalline. See Ezekiel 1 in Tanakh (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).

38. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 34-36; 96: Daer hare vrouwe bi ghesach die diepte vanden gronde ende die hoechde vander ouerste opuaert. The term, “deepness of the depths,” is a recurring image in Hadewijch's Letters (e.g. “Letter 20”) and the Mengeldichten (e.g. “Poem 25”). Ibid., l. 40-53; 97: Jaic wel, ghi hebt mi soe langhe wee ende leet ghedaen ende sidi die redene mijnre zielen ende eest die familie mijns huus daer ghi met gheciert ghaet. Die sengherse der bosinen: mine heyleghe vrese … die andere es die onderschedecheit tusschen v ende die minne … De derde es wijsheit … ende daer ic bekinde mede gode god allene ende god alle dinc gode ende elke dinc alse god alse ic inden gheeste ben daer mede gheenecht.

39. Brieven, v. 1, l. 33-36; 94-5: Mer redene dede mi onder wilen wel weten dat ic die naeste niet en was. Mer de bant van nae gheuoelne van Minnen en liets mi nye gheuoelen noch oec ghelouen.

40. Ibid., l. 58-63; 172: Wat dat ter redenen behoert, dat es al ieghen saluut der gherechter naturen der minnen … want gherechte redene der minnen, dats altoes ene wassende vloet sonder peys ender sonder vergheten.

41. Ibid., l. 207-8; 196: die volcomene minne es een brant: si berren om hem ghenoech te werden.

42. Mengeldichten, l. 185-6; 84: Metten cole ontstect si hen tween / metten viere verbernt sise een; and l. 189-192; 84: Metten dauwe wert die brant ghesacht / Ende ghesaluet metter enegher locht / Die welheyt ende die orewoet / worpse dan in die diepste vloet.

43. Brieven, v. 1, l. 84-87; 255: Die hem cleden wilt ende rike sijn ende een metter godheit, hi sal hem seluen cieren met allen doechden, Ja daer god hem seluen met cleedde ende cierde, doen hi mensche leuede.

44. See “Poem 18” in Mengeldichten, l. 289; 105: Vaet op v cleet. Saskia Murk-Jansen points out that this phrase may be interpreted “gird up your loins” and that cleet (clothes) can refer to the habit of an Order (Personal communication, July 1993). For “Poem 28,” see the Mengeldichten, l. 4; 140: Metter treckender chiere die si mi toghet.

45. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 55-58, 97: Ende si seide: hets waer, met desen gheogheden cleede si di gheciert; metter hemelscher eren hebdi mi ghecleedt.

46. Ibid., l. 67-8; 98: Doe wart mi redene onderdaen, ende ruumde op haer; and l. 68-71: Ende het quam minne ende omuinc mi; ende ic quam buten den gheeste ende bleef ligghende verdronken tote hoghe op den dach in onseggheleke wondere.

47. The nature and position of “Vision 14” in the Visions is problematic; see van Mierlo's comments in Visioenen, v. 1, pages 154-156.

48. Visionen, v. 1, l. 3-4; 140: die mi minne cont makede die mi tote diere vren ye verborghen hadde gheweest.

49. Other aanschijnen, variously translated as “appearance,” “vision,” or “face,” are described in Hadewijch's other visions (e.g. Visions “1,” “3,” “6,” “8,” and “12”). These manifestations are different from the angelic guides, and appear to be aspects of divinity.

50. Visionen, v. 1, l. 28-30; 141: Dat anschijn hadde sesse vloghele ende die waren alle buten besloten ende binnen vloghense alle vren.

51. See Isaiah 6:2 and Ezekiel 1.

52. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 33-38; 141: Die twee ouerste vlieghen in die hoghede daer god die ouerste cracht der minnen met ghebruket. Die twee middelste vlieghen in de wijdde der volcomenre seden der minnen. Die twee nederste vlieghen in die grondelose diepte daer hi alle wesene in verslint.

53. Ibid., l. 55-6; 142-3: Want si hebben in minnen verwonnen datse verwonnen sijn alse de onuerwonne cracht der wassender minnen.

54. Brieven, v. 1, l. 123-142; 256-7: Ende van onuerwonnenre cracht dit wesen wel te vermoghene staerc ende onuerwonnen ende blide … ende woensamleke te ghebrukene ene volwassene Minne.

55. Mengeldichten, 1. 55-57; 129: Die ontgonnen ende verwonnen heuet die minne. Note the similarity of vocabulary.

56. Ulrike Wiethaus has described this Beguine depiction of Minne as a figure similar to the goddess Kali, both life-giving and terrifying (Ulrike Wiethaus, “Sexuality, Gender, and the Body in Late Medieval Women's Spirituality,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (Spring 1991), 45.

57. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 147-156; 147-8: In die diepheit der minnen soe quam oec een nuwe gheruchte dat al waghede … Ende een nuwe wallende opspronc wiel daer op met nuwen storme weder te wlne die nuwe toecomste die daer bernen. Dese ghecierde gheeste quamen metter hogher maren vore minne … Ende altehant worden dese gheciert alle in die selue vorme die minne. Note the theme of adornment that was featured also in “Vision 9.”

58. For example, Letter 22 discusses the plight of those whose humility is so great that they doubt their ability to “conquer” love: “They condemn themselves at every hour” (Hier omme doemen si hen seluen alle vren); Brieven, v. 1, l. 175; 195.

59. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 163-179; 148-9: Dese waren de ghene die oetmoedecheit begheuen hadden tusschen hen ende hare lief bi vriheiden van minnen … ende der minnen waerheit soe na bekinden ende soe hoghe bouen hen, ende hen anders niet en wisten dan vore minne niet (my italics).

60. Ibid., l. 17-18; 140.

61. Zum Brunn and Épiney-Burgard, Women Mystics, 102.

62. For example, St. Bernard of Clairvaux entitled one of his works “The Steps of Humility and Pride,” and described how one ascends the ladder of humility, while one descends into sin and damnation through the ladder of pride. See Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, trans. G. R. Evans (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 99-143.

63. “Letter 19,” Brieven, v. 1, l. 35; 164: Si es sonder materie metter riker vriheit van gode altoes gheuende in rijcheiden, ende werkende met fierheiden. See also “Letter 22,” Brieven, v. 1, l. 44; 189, and “Poem 19,” Mengeldichten, l. 66; 114.

64. Brieven, v. 1, l. 117-120; 174: Die minne maect sine memorie soe enech dat hi ghedinken en can omme heyleghen noch omme menschen, noch dies hemels, noch dier erden, noch der jnghele, noch sijns selues, noch gods.

65. Mengeldichten, l. 67-69; 17: Want hare oetmoet was so groet / Dat si den coninc te hare gheboet / Si was starcst, dat sceen hare wale.

66. Mengeldichten, 1. 99-145; 68-70.

67. Brieven, v. 1, l. 192-4; 62: Soe en soudi van edelheiden ghene pine ontsien; ende soe ensoudi van coenre fierheit v niet laten ontbliuen. Mother Columba Hart notes that “Hadewijch uses the noun fierheit with the meaning of pride in the good sense nine times” (Hadewijch, 366, note 30).

68. For example, “Letter 19” explains, as stated above, that Love is free and working with pride (l. 35). The letter then declares that the soul must be “brought to nothing” (de ziele te nieute wart) in order to attain unity in God. Finally, “Letter 19” concludes that the reader should “demand this light to choose your beloved” (haddi na dit licht ghebeidet v lief te kiesene, so mochtijs vri sijn), because then one would be free and united with God (Brieven, v. 1, 1. 35, 57, 69-70; 164-5).

69. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 180-181; 149: Gherijnesse van ghebrukene, literally, “the touch of satisfaction (or enjoyment).”

70. Brieven, v. 1, l. 14-15, 33; Mengeldichten, l. 94-96; 115: Want daer en can geraken noch vertaken sen noch waert.

71. Visioenen, v. 1, l. 180-181; 149: Ende dat achtende es gherijnesse van ghebrukene die al af doet datter redenen behoert.

72. Ibid., l. 188-195; 149-150: Die ontrouwe maectse so diep dasse die minne al verwielen, ende si gaen hare met sueten ende met sueren ane. Wat die minne gheuet, dats ghesuert ende vertert ende verslonden; watse nempt, dats rike ghemaket van groter ghewout van ghebrukene dies manens der minnen alle vren groet effen hare seluen, soe oec datse al die list gods besceden en can. Note the expressions of personal confidence: “They … went up against her”; “That they always be great like her.”

73. Ibid., l. 256-258; 153. The terms “engulfment,” “abyss” and “unfathomable depths” occur so frequently in Hadewijch's works that space precludes discussion here. Two examples will illustrate Hadewijch's uses of these terms. “Letter 5” asks: “O beloved, why has not love sufficiently overwhelmed you and engulfed you in her abyss?” Brieven, v. 1, l. 28-30; 44; and Poem 14, in which Hadewijch exclaims, “O how deep is the abyss of love!” Mengeldichten, l. 7; 65.

74. Brieven, v. 1, l. 35-6; 76: Mer dese dicke ontrouwe heuet de conscientie soe wijt; Mengeldichten, l. 93-4; 49: Trouwen moet dicket ontbliuen / Dat ontrouwe mach ghecrighen.

75. Visoenen, v. 1, l. 186-7; 149: Ende dochte hen datse allene minden ende hen minne niet en hulpet.

76. Brieven, v. 1, l. 175-182; 195: Hier omme doemen si hen seluen alle vren. Al datsi spreken ende werken ende dienen, dat dunct hen onbequame. Ende hare gheest en ghelouet niet dat grote te veruolghene. Dit houdet hare herte buten hope. Dese wech leidse herde diepe in gode: want die grote onthope leidse ouer alle stercke ende dore alle passagen ende in allen ghewarighen staden.

77. Mengeldichten, l. 155-161; 83: Ghelijc dat die helle al verderuet / ende men in hare niet el en verweruet / dan onghenade ende sterke pine / altoes in ongheduerne te sine / altoes storm ende nuwe veruolghen / al verslonden ende al verswolghen / jn hare grondelose natuere.