SOURCE: Hart, Mother Columba. Introduction to Hadewijch: The Complete Works, translated by Mother Columba Hart, O.S.B., pp. 1-42. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.

[In the following excerpt, Hart surveys the life of Hadewijch, highlighting significant themes and concepts in her letters, stanzaic poetry, and mystical visions.]

HADEWIJCH'S WORKS

In the early thirteenth century the religious currents stirring in western Europe showed particular vitality throughout the Low Countries. In this new and strong movement of devotion, which sought a return to the pure spirit of the Gospel, both nuns and secular women took part. A number of women mystics gifted with ecstatic contemplation gained such respect that much information concerning them has been preserved in Latin “lives” written by contemporary authors and based in some cases—as in the lives of Saint Mary of Oignies (1177-1213) and Saint Lutgard of Aywières (1183-1246)—on close personal acquaintance between the writer and the subject of the biography.¹ To this group of mystics Hadewijch belongs, but her life was never written. She and her works were known in the fourteenth century, especially in the houses of the Canons Regular of Windesheim and to the Carthusians of Diest. By the middle of the sixteenth century, however, her name and everything she wrote (partly, perhaps, because no “life” perpetuated her memory) had fallen into oblivion.

The rediscovery of Hadewijch's works happened in Brussels in 1838. Three medieval specialists, J. F. Willems, F. J. Mone, and F. A. Snellaert, let it be known that in the manuscript collection of the Royal Library they had seen two volumes, both of which contained four works (two in prose and two in poetry) composed in Medieval Dutch and copied in a fourteenth-century hand. These manuscripts, which are catalogued in the Royal Library as MS. A (2879-80) and MS. B (2877-78), had originally belonged to the Canons Regular of Rooklooster, of the Congregation of Windesheim. Both originated in Brussels.

A fourteenth-century manuscript of her works, MS. C (a little earlier in date than MS. B), owned originally by the Canons Regular of Bethlehem, near Louvain, had come into the possession of the Bollandists in the seventeenth century. Heribert Rosweyde (1569-1629), the scholar who first conceived the idea of the great series Acta Sanctorum, noticed inside the cover of the book the inscription “Beata Hadewigis de Antwerpia.” Because of his veneration for the saints he endeavored, in 1622-1623, to identify this Beata, but his efforts proved fruitless.² This same volume, having been acquired in 1878 by the library of the University of Ghent, where it is catalogued as 941, was utilized for the first edition of her complete works in two volumes (the poems in 1875 and the prose in 1895) under her name.³ By the turn of the century it became possible for Josef Van Mierlo (1878-1958) to undertake critical editions, which, starting in 1908, he published, revised, and reissued up to 1952. A fourth manuscript (incomplete), dating from about 1500, is now in the library of the Ruusbroecgenootschap in Antwerp, MS. D (385 II).⁴ Its text of the Poems in Stanzas was edited for publication by J. Alaerts in 1977.⁵

In the manuscripts, the Visions are followed by a supplement known as “The List of the Perfect,” referring to “Vision 13.” It gives the names of the saints most revered by Hadewijch, and of nearly eighty living persons known to her in various countries. The names appear to be authentic; a number of them designate persons historically identifiable, and with relation to certain of whom dates can be established that have been used to good advantage in Hadewijch studies. The comments that accompany the listings, however, lack the mature discretion that characterizes all her other writings. The “List” as it has come down to us does not, therefore, enhance her literary standing.⁶ …

WHO WAS HADEWIJCH?

Who then exactly was this Hadewijch? Scholars endeavored for years to solve the mystery of her family name, but since for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 111 pious women named Hadewijch are known of,⁷ no answer could be found. Her familiarity with chivalry and courtly love, however, and the refinement of character she invariably displays, permit little doubt that she belonged to the higher class.

The long-discussed problem of her dates is not settled yet. Anyway, she most probably lived in the middle of the thirteenth century.

Hadewijch was not a nun but a Beguine—that is, she was one of the devout women of her day who chose to lead a life of apostolic poverty and contemplation without taking vows as nuns. This movement came into being toward the end of the twelfth century, originating largely among women of noble and patrician familes. Apparently they rejected not only the narrow life of the lady in the castle, but the strict obligations of the nun in the cloister. The Beguines sought not vows or enclosure, but a new way of life to be arranged by themselves, in which to the recitation of the Hours they could add manual work, study, or teaching, according to their desires. As they rapidly increased in numbers, various socio-economic factors influenced the development of their life.

The exact origin of the name Beguine has been disputed. In the seventeenth century some writers claimed that the name was intended to honor the seventh-century Saint Begga, sister of Saint Gertrude of Nivelles; others held that it went back to Lambert le Begue (d. 1177), a priest of Liège. Alcuin Mens, in his study of the Beguine and Beghard movement in the Low Countries, states his belief that the word is really derived from the name of the grey cloth of their characteristic dress.⁸ Jacques de Vitry (c. 1170-1240), the friend and biographer of the eminent early Beguine Mary of Oignies, in one of his extant sermons simply said that this name was used for the religious women of Flanders and Brabant.⁹ The first Beguines lived at home individually; but gradually they formed groups, reciting the Hours together, supporting themselves by their common work and submitting to the government of a mistress. Both Beatrice of Nazareth and her Cistercian friend Ida of Nivelles (1197-1231) had lived in Beguine groups before they became nuns.

From the Low Countries and northern France, the Beguine movement spread into Germany, numbering hundreds of adherents. Adversely criticized by clergy and laity alike, it acquired a surer status in 1216 when Jacques de Vitry obtained from Pope Honorius III authorization for the Beguines to live in common and to exhort one another to a good life (sese invicem mutuis exhortationibus invitare).¹⁰

Taking Hadewijch's writings as a whole, we can discover a few clear points toward an autobiographical outline.

She had either founded or joined a Beguine group and had become its mistress; when the Angel addresses her as “Mistress” (“Vision 1”: P. 185), he may have been using this title. She had under her authority a number of young Beguines whom she believed to be specially called to the mystical state, although they only too often fell short of their calling. Hadwijch's presence in the community as spiritual guide is referred to for instance in “Letter 15”: P. 51.

In the course of time, however, Hadewijch's authority among the Beguines met with opposition. It is not hard to see why this happened. Some of them found her unremittingly high standards a grievance; at the same time, her ascendancy aroused jealousy. Ill feeling toward the Beguines on the part of outside persons no doubt played a part, and meanwhile a few of the Beguines themselves secretly engaged in undermining her position. This may explain why the Angel in “Vision 4”: P. 44 greeted her as “Unknown to all your friends and to all your enemies!” Means were devised to send her companions away from her. At length she was threatened with an accusation of teaching quietism, a charge that carried with it the possibility of being turned out of the community to wander the countryside, or even of imprisonment if she were denounced to the Inquisition. She laments the pain of separation from Sara, Emma, Margriet, and the unnamed Beguine who was dearest to her of all, and in “Letter 25” she speaks of being one day reunited with them. Van Mierlo thought from this that she was actually planning a reunion in a new community in another place. This happy ending theory is however rejected, and no doubt correctly, by J.-B. Porion, who believes that she referred rather to being with them in heaven.¹¹

The general opinion of scholars at present seems to be that Hadewijch actually was evicted from her Beguine community and exiled; that she was made the talk of the town (as Spaapen thinks) and thrown out because of her doctrine that one must live Love.¹² Statements from her letters taken out of context might have been used to formulate a charge of quietism. In the “life” of her contemporary Ida of Nivelles, presumably by Gosuin of Bossut, we read that Ida suffered much from persecutions aroused by slanderous tongues.¹³ In Ida's case, the persecution was apparently due to doubt of the genuineness of her ecstasies and fear of her knowledge of the secrets of conscience. She, however, as a Cistercian nun, enjoyed the protection of the rule of enclosure and the strong organization of the order, whereas Hadewijch had no such advantages.

It may perhaps be conjectured, considering how often Hadewijch urged her Beguines to care for the sick,¹⁴ that when she finally became homeless she offered her services to a leprosarium or hospital for the poor, where she could nurse those who suffered and sleep at least part of the night in some corner, with access to the church or chapel always attached to such establishments in her time.

HADEWIJCH'S EDUCATION AND THE SOURCES OF HER SPIRITUALITY

To form some idea of Hadewijch's education, we may turn to the lives of two other women mystics, in order to learn what their education was. Beatrice, already mentioned, was taught at home by her mother to read the Latin Psalter (the medieval primer), and likewise learned from her the rudiments of Latin grammar. Then, after attending a school of liberal arts for over a year, she entered the school maintained in the enclosure of the Cistercian abbey of Florival for intending novices. Here she continued her school course. Her “life” does not define this course, but considering the customs of the time there can be no reasonable doubt that she went on studying the seven liberal arts—that is, the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry—including geography, astronomy, and music).¹⁵ Ida of Gorsleeuw (c. 1203-1260) likewise attended a school of liberal arts and in addition took lessons in calligraphy. At the age of thirteen she entered the school of the Cistercian abbey of La Ramée, where a few years later she took the veil.¹⁶

We have no direct statement that Hadewijch ever attended a school, but her many allusions to the school of love in Poems in Stanzas, and particularly in “Stanzaic Poem 14,” which speaks of the curriculum and the masters of this school, lead us to suppose that she probably did.¹⁷ Her education, wherever she acquired it, is reflected in her familiarity with the Latin language, the rules of rhetoric, medieval numerology, Ptolemaic astronomy, and the theory of music. She knew the rules of letter writing (the ars dictaminis) and of versification. She was also proficient in French, and she introduces a number of French words into her writings.

Among her principal sources, first place belongs to the Scriptures, which color her whole thought. She quotes numerous texts from both Testaments, names scriptural personages, and refers to incidents of the Old Testament as well as to the mysteries of Christ and Mary. On occasion a Scripture text serves as starting point for the development of her thought, most notably in “Letter 12” where she uses a text from Obadiah, and in “Poem 12,” which is a loose commentary on Psalm 44:11-12.

Either in her works or in the “List,” Hadewijch names several of the great Church writers—Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Isidore of Seville. Of the great twelfth-century writers, she is indebted in varying degrees to the Victorines—Hugh (1079-1141), Adam (c. 1110-1177), and Richard of Saint Victor (d. 1173); and to the Cistercians—Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), William of Saint Thierry (1085-1148), and Guerric of Igny (c. 1087-1147). The ones most important to us are Richard, from whom Hadewijch borrowed in “Letter 10,” and William, from whom she borrowed in “Letter 18.” It is highly probable that she did not know William by name, since in her day and long afterward his works circulated under the name of Bernard of Clairvaux; but William is the closest to her in spirituality. With regard to Thomas Aquinas, we must bear in mind that Hadewijch wrote too early to undergo any influence from him.

As sources for her poetry, the Latin poems of the Church's liturgy must not be passed over, especially the sequences, from which she derived no less than eleven of her metrical patterns for the Poems in Stanzas.¹⁸ She is also much indebted to the poetry of courtly love.¹⁹ Scholars in this field conclude that she was well acquainted with this poetry in the vernacular, and that thanks to her lyrical genius she surpassed in virtuosity its most celebrated practitioners. It also seems fairly certain that some of the Latin verses in the Complaint of Nature by Alan of Lille (d. 1203) are reflected in “Poem 13.”²⁰

The provenance of a few themes frequent in Hadewijch's works is still to be considered. For a certain Father of the Church of whom we have already spoken, namely for Augustine, Hadewijch felt much more than admiration. She loved Augustine because of his burning love for the Trinity, as she states in “Vision 11”: P. 49; and we notice that he is the only nonbiblical saint who ever appeared to her in her recorded visions. We are not surprised, therefore, to find in Hadewijch some specific instances of dependence on him.

Scholars have pointed out in Hadewijch's thought a few traits characteristic of Eastern rather than Western theology. In the tradition of the Greek Fathers is found the Trinitarian concept according to which the Father is the Source without source of the divine fecundity, in the sense in which Western theology would say that the Divine Nature is its source.²¹ This explains the numerous passages where Hadewijch speaks of the Father, not in the Western but in the Greek sense.

Another theme of Greek origin is prominent in Hadewijch, namely the idea of eternal progress, which runs through all the works of Gregory of Nyssa (335-395).²²

We must not close this survey of Hadewijch's sources without adding two cases where she borrows from some author a certain thought sequence that she proceeds to develop in a completely independent manner. The first instance is found in “Letter 22,” which is based on a Latin hymn, “Alpha et Omega, magne Deus.” This hymn is classified by Migne both among the works of Hildebert of Lavardin, Archbishop of Tours (d. 1134), and among those of Peter Abelard (d. 1142).²³ The paradoxical ideas expressed in this strophe had seen the light long before in the prose of Isidore of Seville,²⁴ who is named in the “List.”

The second instance occurs in “Poem 2,” which is based on a legend narrated in 3 Esdras 3:1-5:6. Three Esdras is an apocryphal book composed about 90 b.c. and included by Jerome in the Vulgate. (It was finally deleted from the canon of Scripture by the Council of Trent.) This legend is also recounted by Flavius Josephus (d. a.d. 95) in The Antiquities of the Jews, composed a.d. 93; and in the twelfth century it was taken over by Peter Comestor (d. 1180) in his Scholastic History.²⁵ Hadewijch certainly does not depend on the Comestor, who changes the order of the narration; and one would suppose she used the Vulgate, as more accessible than Josephus.

HADEWIJCH'S DOCTRINE OF THE MYSTICAL LIFE

Hadewijch proposes a love mysticism that is both Christological and Trinitarian. The central theme of love had taken possession of her heart and mind very early, with her experience of Divine Love at the age of ten. Her mystical concepts, necessarily expressed in different manners in her works depending on the literary genre she employs, recur constantly. None of her four works, however, gives a systematic treatment of her doctrine, since all of them are made up of numerous separate pieces in which her thought presents itself as circumstances happened to call it forth.

The theme of love appears on practically every page. Hadewijch has several different terms for love. Karitate usually refers to love for men, for neighbor. Lief means the beloved; she employs the word either for Christ or for the soul (where it refers to the soul, we have translated it, for clarity, as “the loved one”). Minne, a word of feminine gender and belonging to the language of courtly love, she uses far oftener than the other two terms.

Van Mierlo and Axters explained Hadewijch's use of minne as signifying primarily God, or Christ, or Divine Love.²⁶ N. De Paepe, however, in his book Hadewijch, Poems in Stanzas: A study of love [minne] in connection with 12th- and 13th-century mysticism and profane love-lyric (1967), arrives at the conclusion that

Minne in Hadewijch's Poems in Stanzas is not God, Christ, or Divine Love—except in a very limited number of places. … Minne is an experience, the way in which the soul experiences its relation to God, a dynamic experience of relationship.²⁷

For an opinion on De Paepe's views we might cite that of Spaapen, who praises this new approach to the Poems in Stanzas as “bringing a marked widening and deepening to the interpretation of Hadewijch,” while at the same time he notes certain reservations: “The theological side of the question is almost entirely left out of consideration. One may wonder whether this is admissible.”²⁸

TRINITARIAN MYSTICISM

The Trinitarian aspect of Hadewijch's mysticism is particularly rich. It goes back to the analogy of the Trinity in the memory, understanding, and love of the human mind, which was originally discovered by Augustine.²⁹ There can be little doubt, however, that Hadewijch accepts this analogy as it is presented by William of Saint Thierry, for William uses the term reason where Augustine has understanding; and what is of far greater importance, William gives Augustine's parallel a dynamic character, regarding the triad in the soul as a participation in the Trinitarian life of God. She was surely familiar with the passage in The nature and dignity of love in which William says that when God breathed in the face of man on creating him, he placed in the highest part, so to speak, of his mind

the power of memory, that he might always remember the Creator's power and goodness; immediately and without a moment's delay, memory generated from itself reason; and memory and reason together brought forth will. For memory possesses and contains in itself that to which man should tend; reason knows he must so tend; the will tends; and these three constitute a kind of unity, but three powers; just as in the sublime Trinity there is one substance and Three Persons. As in the Trinity the Father is the begetter, the Son begotten, and the Holy Spirit is from both, so reason is generated from memory, and from memory and reason proceeds will. In order therefore that the rational soul created in man may cleave to God, the Father claims for himself memory; the Son, reason; and the Holy Spirit, proceeding from both Father and Son claims the will, proceeding from both memory and reason.³⁰

Hadewijch presents this doctrine in “Letter 22”: P. 137, where she writes:

He gave us his Nature in the soul, with three powers whereby to love his Three Persons: with enlightened reason, the Father; with the memory, the wise Son of God; and with the high flaming will, the Holy Spirit.

Discussing the medieval use of the word memory, R. Vanneste explains that the passage of Hadewijch just quoted does not mean either that reason is the image of the Father or that memory is the image of the Son. Rather it means that we love the Father with the Son, to whom reason is appropriated; and we love the Son with memory, that is to say, with the Father.³¹

Hadewijch's longest development of the theme of the image is in “Poem 4”:5-24:

I pray the Holy Trinity,
Through its grace and for its goodness,
As it has honored you with its image …
That you may understand by reason
What God has accomplished through you …
If you live with reason in truth,
You enlighten all your labor;
So your will is pleased to live well …
And then your memory becomes valiant,
And within it shall reign glory,
With confidence and fidelity,
That it may fully contemplate its God.

In “Letter 4”: P. 1, she states the theme in the negative:³²

When reason is obscured, the will grows weak and powerless and feels an aversion for effort, because reason does not enlighten it. Consequently the memory loses its deep notions, and the joyous confidence, and the repeated zealous intentions by which its confidence taught it to endure more easily the misery of waiting for its Beloved.

Hadewijch's doctrine of living the Trinity appears in “Letter 1.” Her statement of the theme there is not easy to follow; the reason may be that chronologically “Letter 1” (as we shall soon explain in discussing the letters) is not the first of the series but one of the last, and therefore a full explanation in “Letter 1” was not necessary. She says in “Letter 1” that we must first contemplate ourselves in God, and therefore learn to contemplate what God is, namely, the Trinity. She goes on to explain how we live the life of the Trinity; we live the life of the Father, when we allow his irresistible power to work in us; the life of the Holy Spirit, when we allow his holy will to be done in us; and the life of the Son, when we allow ourselves to be enlightened by his radiance and truth.

The full depth of what Hadewijch can tell us about the relations with the Trinity that perfect souls may one day attain begins to dawn on us when she explains living the Trinity and the Unity.³³ This doctrine of hers, although it corresponds in a general manner to a truth known to all the greatest contemplatives—namely, that the soul that has reached perfection must give itself both to the activity of virtues and to the repose of contemplation—is not found in her sources. What is new in her conception is, in the words of Porion, “the mysterious parallel” she finds “between this structure of our spiritual life and the Trinitarian life in the very bosom of the Divine Being.” It is indubitably from her that Ruusbroec inherited this theme and used it consistently throughout his works.³⁴

This is set forth by Hadewijch particularly in “Letters 17” and “30.” Both form and content of “Letter 17” call for an explanation. She begins in verse with a series of commands and prohibitions arranged to form three mnemonic couplets that refer in order to the Holy Spirit, the Father, and the Son. In each couplet the first verse concerns the outward activity of the Divine Person, in the works attributed to him, while the second verse concerns his unity with the other two Divine Persons. Hadewijch would have us shape our life on this rhythm by turning outward in the activity of the virtues, and turning inward again into union with God. Here she is not merely making a comparison; when she speaks of passing from the aspect of activity (the Divine Persons) to the aspect of repose in love (the Divine Essence, the Unity), she envisages the entrance of our life into the Divine Life. To show that there is no quietistic error in Hadewijch's emphasis on the soul's refraining from the exercise of the virtues while it is called into the Unity, Van Mierlo outlines the general thought:

While we are engaged in love, we are serving God in the Divine Persons, and we must strive for the different virtues; but when love predominates and establishes us in simplicity, we can only love. The reason is that in this love we practice the virtues far more perfectly; they flow from the fulness and unity of our life, and we no longer need to strive for them separately.³⁵

Porion for his part argues that the whole doctrine should be free from question, since Ruusbroec took it over and stated it repeatedly.³⁶

Hadewijch is not afraid to say in “Letter 17”: P. 101 that the commands and prohibitions she has set forth were given her by the Father in a vision that took place on Ascension Day four years earlier.

CHRISTOLOGICAL MYSTICISM

Hadewijch never tires of preaching that we must be conformed to Christ in his Humanity in order to be conformed to him in his Divinity. In this conformity she wants us to find the motivation for the pursuit of the virtues; we must practice all the virtues for the reason that Christ chose to do so during his life on earth. She says in “Letter 15”: P. 16 that, with regard to Christ, we must consider how

although he was himself God—how he gave all, and how he lived exclusively for veritable love of the Father and for charity toward men. He worked with wakeful charity, and he gave to Love all his Heart and all his soul and all his strength.

(Cf. Luke 10:27)

Or as she states more explicitly in “Letter 6”: P. 316ff.

It is man's obligation to practice virtues, … solely out of homage to the incomparable sublimity of God, who created our nature to this end. … This is the way in which the Son of God took the lead, and of which he himself gave us knowledge. … He perfectly accomplished, amid multiplicity, the will of the Father in all things and at all times.

Hadewijch's doctrine of our duty to live Christ seems to be illustrated in a notable way in the passage on the virtue of Peacefulness, one of the bridesmaids in “Vision 12”: P. 112. With the boldness that we have learned to associate with her deep desire for union with God, Hadewijch here is actually inviting us to “live Christ” in the sense of participating in all his mysteries.

She speaks here of the soul as sharing in the Annunciation—being announced with him; and in the Nativity, being born with him. We shall see that in “Vision 13”: P. 15 she wants the soul to join him in the flight into Egypt; and here she insists we must grow up with him. She has often before said that the soul must live as man with his Humanity, for instance in “Letter 6”: P. 249; here she urges living “together with him in all like pains, in poverty, in ignominy, and in compassion for all those with whom justice was angry” and, like him, never receiving alien consolation. At once we recall what she heard Christ say in “Vision 1”: P. 288: “If you wish to be like me in my Humanity, … you will desire to be poor, miserable, and despised by all men.”

As a preliminary to entering with Christ into the mysteries of the Passion, the soul must accept being forsaken like him, as Hadewijch learned from him in “Vision 1”: P. 288 and 364:

All persons will fall away from you and forsake you, and no one will be willing to wander about with you in your distress and in your weakness. … When I had worked miracles and become better known, few friends remained to me in the world. Yes, at my death almost all men alive abandoned me. Therefore do not let it grieve you that all persons will forsake you on account of perfect love and because you are living in my will.

No wonder Hadewijch says to her young Beguines (“Letter 6”: P. 249): “We do not live with Christ as he lived, neither do we forsake all as Christ did, nor are we forsaken by all as Christ was.”

In the mysteries of Golgotha, we must “carry the cross with the Son of God”—later she remarks that “the cross we must bear with Christ is exile on earth”—but we are only too inclined to carry the cross with Simon, who received pay for carrying it. We must always persevere in all the virtues; and “this is to be crucified with Christ” (“Letter 6”: P. 361). Then we must hang on the cross with him (ibid.: P. 227), and finally “die with Christ.”

In two different contexts Hadewijch mentions the harrowing of hell, when the Son “carried life and light where no light shall be, and his name drew his beloved ones there into clear light and full fruitfulness” (“Letter 22”: P. 285). The second passage is that of “Vision 12”: P. 112, from which we have already quoted; there Peacefulness declares that the Bride died with Christ “and freed all the prisoners with him, and bound what he bound.”

For the glorious mysteries, Hadewijch states that when the soul offers to Love “noble service in all works of virtue, and a life of exile in all obedience, … this is … to rise again with him” (“Letter 6”: P. 361). Finally, “a short time after the fortieth day” (“Vision 13”: P. 241), the soul

with him ascended to his Father; and there with him acknowledged his Father as Father, and him as Son with him; and with him she acknowledged the Holy Spirit as Holy Spirit; and with him, like him, she knew all as One, and the Essence in which they are One.

(“Vision 12”: P. 112)

INFLUENCE

In the fourteenth century the entire volume of Hadewijch's Letters was translated into High German, her name being rendered as “Adelwip.” The full translation was lost, but the Berlin State Library obtained a small portion of it in two fragmentary copies, of the fourteenth and the fifteenth century respectively, both containing “Letter 10,” and the second adding some sentences from six other Letters.³⁷ Another German translation comprising parts of “Letters 3” and “6” and of “Poems 5” and “6” has been recently discovered at Einsiedeln in the Abbey Library, in a manuscript (codex 277) dating from the second half of the fourteenth century.³⁸ The Royal Library at The Hague also owns a manuscript, written probably at the end of the fifteenth century, that contains a sort of brief anthology of extracts (in the original language) from six different Letters. A full account, however, of the Hadewijch-fragments in the Limburg Sermons,³⁹ or of the relatively unimportant authors of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in whose works her influence can be traced, would seem to be of interest chiefly to specialists. We shall turn rather to the most prominent writer who availed himself of her thought—the great mystical theorist John of Ruusbroec (1293-1381).

Through the friendship of his uncle, John Hinckaert, who was a Canon of Saint Gudule's church in Brussels, Ruusbroec went to that city as a boy to prepare for the priesthood. After studies by which he evidently acquired a profound knowledge of theology, he was ordained priest and served as a chaplain at Saint Gudule's. A day came when the works of Hadewijch somehow fell into his hands. It may safely be conjectured that this happened rather early in his career, for evidences of his familiarity with her writings are to be found in the first of the six books he wrote before withdrawing to Groenendal in 1343, The kingdom of lovers.⁴⁰ Here Ruusbroec introduces the theme of the Trinity and the Unity.⁴¹ In this work he also borrows from Hadewijch's “Poem 16”:31-40 the Eucharistic theme of our eating Christ and his eating us.⁴²

If The kingdom of lovers is admittedly somewhat faltering, in his next book, The spiritual espousals, Ruusbroec's thought has attained full maturity. The Espousals further enables us to verify Porion's assertion that “the essential and specific features of his doctrine, as well as a fundamental part of his literary resources,” go back to Hadewijch.⁴³ Although she had no system of spirituality, Ruusbroec took over the various elements of her mystical thought, deepened and enlarged them through his knowledge of theology and metaphysical psychology, and built from them his spiritual synthesis. We find in the Espousals her themes of living Christ by the virtues,⁴⁴ of the Trinity and the Unity already noted,⁴⁵ of conquering God,⁴⁶ and of being God with God,⁴⁷ as well as a recurring awareness of exemplarism.⁴⁸ Her image of the tree of the knowledge of God, growing upside down, reappears as the tree of faith.⁴⁹ Some striking passages are reproduced almost verbatim, such as that of the eleventh hour of “Letter 20,” for we read in Ruusbroec: “Here man is possessed by Love, so that he must forget himself and God, and know of nothing else but love.”⁵⁰

Lest examples grow wearisome, we add only the following: At the beginning of his last work, The book of the twelve Beguines, he quotes verbatim (or almost) some lines of her poems;⁵¹ and in The seven steps in the ladder of spiritual love he borrows again from “Letter 20,” the tenth hour:

The Holy Spirit … cries within us with a loud voice, yet without words, “Love the Love that ever loves you!” His cry is, as it were, an inward touching of our spirit, and his voice more terrible than thunder. … And his touch cries in the spirit without ceasing: “Pay your debt! Love the Love that ever loves you!” … Love is never silent, but ever and without ceasing cries: “Love ye Love!”⁵²

LETTERS

The striking feature of Hadewijch's prose writing is its artistry. She has a sense of literary structure, of emphasis and subordination in the development of her thoughts. She has a rich vocabulary that gives both variety and a wide range in choosing the precise word; and she places no word by chance. Of the sound of each word she is keenly aware, and always uses sounds to good effect. The style of her letters is a little more finished than that of the visions, but the latter must also be recognized as artistic prose.

As has already been said, the volume entitled Letters includes both letters proper and a few short treatises. To speak first about the letters proper, nearly all were most probably written for the instruction and formation of the same young Beguine, the person for whom Hadewijch had a special love because she believed her to be one called by God to the highest spiritual ways.

Hadewijch's general argument, as will readily be seen, is that mystical life flows from the truths of faith, which truths she sets forth with unfaltering assurance. To point out the first appearance of some of her principal themes, that of the Trinity in “Letter 1” we have already noted. In “Letter 2”: P. 29 she introduces the theme of self-knowledge (with which “Vision 1” begins). She does not follow Bernard of Clairvaux in seeing it as the recognition that we are defaced images of God;⁵³ to her, as in this instance, it is an awareness of our littleness in comparison with God, arrived at by the examination of our thoughts. In the last paragraph her exemplarism should be noticed. The reference (P. 118) to the secret word is one of many hints of her feeling for the book of Job.

In “Letter 6”: P. 227, Hadewijch makes the bold statement, “We all wish to be god with God” (adopted by Ruusbroec),⁵⁴ which she here contrasts with “to live as men with his Humanity.” Near the end she touches on the subject of grace, which recurs many times in both the letters and the visions.⁵⁵ In “Letter 9” the theme “Who is God, and what is God?” should be compared with “What is Love, and who is Love?”⁵⁶

“Letter 12” is addressed to the superior of a men's monastery, very probably Gilbertus of Saint James' Abbey (Jacob's in Dutch) in Brussels. It urges Hadewijch's often reiterated directive that we must conquer God (or Love) so that God (or Love) may conquer us, on the model of Jacob's wrestling with the Angel (P. 174; cf. Gen. 32:22-32).

“Letter 13”: P. 45 brings in the concept of man's debt to God (or to Love); and “Letter 14” gives us the first reference to the “land of love” where we shall travel so often with Hadewijch in the Poems in Stanzas. “Letter 18” (which continues the thought of “Letter 17”) has been much spoken of because of the long quotation it contains from William of Saint Thierry.⁵⁷

Throughout the letters, whenever Hadewijch addresses her correspondent directly, we perceive her maternal attitude of warmth and sympathy. At the same time she can reprove sternly, and she admits of no compromise. With unfailing psychological acumen she puts her finger on the grave fault, points out the causes and the remedy, and urges not the most seductive but the purest motivation for new progress.

The first of the six treatises in the volume, “Letter 10,” is the one that introduces, for the most part literally, several ideas taken from Richard of Saint Victor's Commentary on the Song of Songs. This interesting dependence was not discovered until 1943.⁵⁸ “Letter 15” is a spirited allegory, in which the life in common practiced in a religious house is compared to a pilgrimage, that work of devotion so popular in the thirteenth century.

“Letter 20,” a fascinating piece of prose, describes the soul's mystical ascent as a series of twelve hours; they are divisible into three groups of four each, corresponding respectively to “the seeking mind,” “the desiring heart,” and “the loving soul.” A sense of God's transcendence, as experienced by the soul, is conveyed by the very obscurity of expression and the use of negatives such as nameless, unknown, unawares, unbidden, unheard-of. Twice she uses the word God, but the Trinity is never mentioned, and none of the Three Persons is named. There can be no doubt, however, that in the second and third Hours she speaks of living Christ in his Humanity by union with his sufferings. This piece is often compared to Seven ways of love by Beatrice of Nazareth.⁵⁹

We have already mentioned that a strophe from a Latin hymn ascribed either to Hildebert or to Abelard is the source of “Letter 22.” This treatise appears at first reading to be philosophical in tone, but on further consideration it is seen to be the poetical outpouring of a mystic who endeavors to express the inexpressible wonder of God's Being. Of particular interest is her use in P. 169 of the term despair in the ameliorative sense of a surpassing virtue. She presents the same idea at greater length in “Poem 1”:139-172.

“Letter 28” comes back to the speculative theme of “Letters 17” and “18.” Without a systematic exposition, Hadewijch presents one after another a series of statements, in the form of outbursts of spiritual joy, as undefined heights in the mystical ascent.

Porion has called attention to the profound significance of “Letter 30”; here Hadewijch sets forth the mutual demand between the Trinity and the essential Unity in God, and also the demand between God and the soul, and seizes on the continuity between the two. This is another theme Ruusbroec takes over from Hadewijch and repeats with powerful effect.⁶⁰

If we read through the letters to see what we can learn on the subject of Hadewijch's trouble with her young Beguines, we notice here and there references to its different phases. In the beginning, Hadewijch was accepted as mistress and guide. Gradually covert opposition to her made itself felt. In time, “false brethren” grew bold in stirring up trouble, and Hadewijch was aware that they wished to get rid of her. Then came the crisis, when separation actually took place. In the fifth and last phase, Hadewijch was forsaken by all.

“Letters 8,” “12,” “15,” and “18” allude to covert jealousy; “5” and “19” refer to the trouble caused by “false brethren”; “23,” “25,” and “26” are connected with the separation crisis; and “22,” “29,” “1,” and “2” (as well as “26”) belong to the phase when she was really forsaken. The arrangement in which the letters stand in the manuscripts has never been considered chronological. In a chronological list, therefore, as far as can be judged, “Letter 31” would stand first; “17” and “28” would be somewhere in the group of the first nineteen Letters; and “8,” “12,” “15,” and “18,” with “5” and “19,” with “23,” “25”-“26,” and with “22,” “29,” “1,” and “2” would constitute the final group.

That Hadewijch herself placed the letters in the order in which they stand in the manuscripts can probably never be fully proved, but since it is now known that she did arrange the Poems in Stanzas (as will be explained shortly), it seems not improbable that she herself decided the order of all four of her volumes. In view of her literary genius one can hardly doubt that she was aware of their artistic value, and she must have considered their spiritual content as of still greater moment. Knowing in advance, as she did, that plans were being laid to send her away from the community, she would have had a certain length of time in which to ask back any significant letters of which she had no copy.

In arranging the volume she may have placed “Letter 1” first because it has overtones of the first chapter of Saint John's Gospel, and it stresses her theme of living the Trinity. Its one bitter cry of pain startles us, for we are unprepared to comprehend it. Why, then, did she not choose to begin with a letter we would not have found in any way disturbing? One answer may be that if we compare this first piece with the first piece in each of her other volumes, we observe that each of them contains a strong statement about suffering encountered by the soul in its longing for union with God. Perhaps she wished to make clear from the start that anyone who undertakes with truth to perform works of justice in imitation of the Son, for the glory of the noble love that God is, must expect to meet with more than ordinary sufferings.

POEMS IN STANZAS

Hadewijch, as we have just seen, possessed no small talent for the writing of artistic prose, but the gift for poetry she displays in the Poems in Stanzas can only be termed lyrical genius. Since she was not a person with a religious side and a secular side but wholly centered in God, all these poems are mystical love lyrics—a new genre for which she must be given the credit.⁶¹

Her poems themselves are proof that she had mastered the troubadours' art. It has been said that just as Bernard of Clairvaux used the Song of Songs to express his own intimate and personal experience of God, Hadewijch used the poetry of courtly love to express the emotional tensions of the longing for God,⁶² showing an unfailing mastery of all its techniques: stanza structure, the tornada,⁶³ meter, rhyme, assonance, concatenation, and figures of speech.

In the poetry of courtly love, she could turn everything to profit. The service of love offered to the lady became the service of love offered by the soul to God. The lady then would be God, or Love (minne). Sometimes Hadewijch herself would be knight errant, courting dangers and adventures in her honor, riding down the roads of the land of love. Feudal customs and modes of expression fitted readily into the pattern. The sufferings inherent in the service of the lady and the lover's many complaints over his hard lot could be effectively applied to the trials to be faced and the burdens to be borne by one whose love for God is unfaltering.

At the same time Hadewijch drew on the sequences of the Church's liturgy, not only for metrical patterns but for the Latin phrases incorporated into “Stanzaic Poems 1” and “45.”⁶⁴ It is also noteworthy that whenever she uses the tornada, she indicates it by R/n, the sign by which the liturgical books introduce a responsory. She draws also, and abundantly, on the beautiful words of the Scriptures.

The fact that there is a prearranged significance in the order Hadewijch assigned to the various poems in this volume remained unsuspected from the time she wrote them until as recently as 1974, when it was discovered by J. Bosch.⁶⁵ He succeeded in demonstrating that she structured this entire book according to the principles of medieval numerology, and that in the scheme she evolved (without giving the reader any hint of it), “Stanzaic Poem 29,” on the subject of the Virgin Mary, is the central poem of the entire series of forty-five. The discovery of this hitherto undetected aspect of Hadewijch's volume is an important addition to our knowledge of her literary artistry.

Since no one now questions that the Poems in Stanzas were addressed to Hadewijch's young Beguines,⁶⁶ it is to be expected that traces may be discerned in them of the same troubles alluded to in the letters, even though the demands of artistic form and poetic inspiration may make the meaning less perceptible. Scholars now tend to see Hadewijch's concern amid these disturbances as directed less to her own personal grief and suffering than to her intense desire to recall her young Beguines to their early fervor.⁶⁷

The following passages seem to imply the activities of the “false brethren”: in “Stanzaic Poem 3”:30, her reference in the first person to suffering “losses, defamations, oppression”; and in the last strophe of “Stanzaic Poem 4,” her prayer for her young Beguines (“noble souls”), who are driven from their goal by cruel aliens.

In “Stanzaic Poem 13”:29-32, she warns them to be on their guard, for:

There are many who seem anxious to betake themselves
          Where they are advised to seek Love.
But they stray away from fidelity along alien ways:
                    I have watched this happen.

In “Stanzaic Poem 32”: stanzas 1, 2, and 6:

Soon flowers will open to our sight, …
Also men will condemn the noble hearts
Who live under Love's dominion …
With him who now bears true Love's chains,
As his debt to Love requires,
The cruel aliens before long
Will quite openly interfere.
Often they intimidate
Those who trust high Love's protection …
I counsel them that they spare nothing,
And that they set themselves
To persevere with longing in the storm
In spite of their fault-finders,
Who are so bent on harming them.

From this perspective, H. Schottmann interprets “Stanzaic Poem 1” as an appeal to her young Beguines to return to the true Love from which they have fallen away. In the refrain after every stanza, she is addressing them directly to tell them they can still reconstitute themselves as a group. While in Stanza 3 she asks her circle for pity on her own suffering, her basic theme is that of renewal, hinted in Stanza 1 by the allusions to the new year and the new spring, and strongly urged in Stanza 9:

May God give us a renewed mind
          For noble and free love,
To make us so new in our life
          That Love may bless us
And renew, with new taste,
          Those to whom she can give new fullness;
Love is the new and powerful recompense
          Of those whose life renews itself for Love alone.

The final phase, that of Hadewijch's being forsaken, is echoed in “Stanzaic Poem 17”:25-28, 31-34:

How life can horrify and grieve
One who has given his all for all
And in the darkness is driven the wrong way
          To a place whence he envisages no return. …
O proud souls who stand as if on Love's side
And live freely under her protection,
Pity one who is disowned, whom Love overwhelms
                    And presses hard in despairing exile!

The mention of suffering, bitterness, blows, and death in the last two stanzas of “Stanzaic Poem 45” has been associated by G. Kazemier with this final phase of Hadewijch's forsakenness. In his opinion, these stanzas strengthen the thought of danger expressed in Hadewijch's “Letter 29,” where she speaks of her fear of imprisonment. He argues that as “Letter 29” belongs to the end of her correspondence, “Stanzaic Poem 45” is the last poem she wrote, and that the final verse, Unde mori. Amen, Amen, shows that when she wrote this last stanzaic poem she was perhaps in prison awaiting execution.⁶⁸

It seems as though if Hadewijch had been actually arrested or executed on a charge of heresy by the Inquisition the exhaustive efforts of the scholars to identify her would not have proved such a complete failure. The execution of the Beguine Aleydis (named in the “List”) found mention in not a few contemporary chronicles.⁶⁹ That of Margaret Porete at Paris on June 1, 1310, is likewise well documented. Besides, one wonders whether the public indignation stirred up by the burning of Aleydis may not have tended to deter somewhat the prosecution of Beguines by the Inquisition. If Hadewijch's period of literary activity came to an end in 1240, only four years had elapsed since Aleydis died. It is clear in Margaret's case that the Church authorities did not wish to pursue her; she was only forbidden by the Bishop of Cambrai to circulate her book, and her failure to obey was ignored until she brought on her own fate by propagating the book in Paris.⁷⁰ As to the question of Hadewijch, one or two recent scholars think it possible she was arrested, but none definitely asserts it.⁷¹

VISIONS

Accounts of the visions of not a few saints, blesseds, and devout persons of the first half of the thirteenth century have been preserved, but Hadewijch's visions are distinguished from the rest by their lofty seriousness, power of imagery, and metaphysical-mystical meaning. Her visions have something of the apocalyptic character of those of Hildegard, who is mentioned in the “List,” but Hildegard's vast complexity of images and moral reflections bring us the teachings of a prophetess, whereas Hadewijch's intensity and the deep impact of each phase of a vision as she tells it offer us an entrance point into her contemplative experience.

As far as the structure of the Visions is concerned, Hadewijch herself marks it out by the contrast between “in the spirit” and “out of the spirit.” (These two terms are drawn from Richard of Saint Victor.⁷²)

Hadewijch did not record all her visions. She mentions, in particular, visions of the Transfiguration that she never wrote down (“Vision 14”: P. 85). At least some of those she has left us seem to belong to the early part of her life, for “Vision 6” occurred when she was nineteen.

All things considered, it seems probable that the structure of her book of visions can be understood only by comparing it with that of her other works. The Poems in Stanzas are forty-five in number, and the visions are fourteen. If we add to fourteen the number of the letters, thirty-one, we have again the total of forty-five. We are inclined to believe that this second total was arrived at by design, especially when we reflect that the visions are actually only eleven in number, some of them having apparently been divided; and among the letters, “Letter 6” appears to be an amalgam of sections from several distinct letters on closely related subjects.

There can be little doubt that Hadewijch chose the number fourteen deliberately. In Saint Matthew's Gospel (1:17) the genealogy of Christ is presented in three divisions of fourteen generations each, so that fourteen becomes the threefold genealogical key number of Christ. Very possibly this verse in Matthew looks back to the numerical value of the Hebrew name of David, which is fourteen.⁷³ A more appropriate number for Hadewijch's visions could hardly be found, since they are the source of her familiarity with the mysteries of Christ and of her teaching that we must live Christ, on which her spirituality largely depends.

In 1925 Van Mierlo stated his belief that Hadewijch wrote down the visions a considerable time after they occurred, at the request of her confessor; twenty-five years later he merely suggested the confessor, with a question mark. More recent scholarship holds that she wrote them for the benefit of her young Beguines.⁷⁴ Thus added meaning accrues to the slightly veiled expressions (for instance the vague terms men and menschen, which we have translated “persons”) now and then used in the visions to designate them. It is noteworthy that in her prayer in “Vision 5”: P. 12, she refers to them as “those who are ours,” because she has interior knowledge that these young Beguines belong both to her and to God. Very striking is the passage in “Vision 8”: P. 33 where she hears Christ say to her:

“By this way I went forth from my Father to you and those who are yours, and I came again from you and those who are yours back to my Father (cf. John 16:28). With myself I have also sent you this hour, and you must, with me, pass it on to those who are yours.”

A new and important contribution on the subject of the visions and their audience has recently been made by Vekeman. Starting from the allegorical character of the visions he demonstrates that Hadewijch and her little circle of Beguines understood the difference between allegoria in dictis (rhetorical allegory) and allegoria in factis (allegory in which a genuine historical event becomes the symbol of another event), and that they therefore interpreted the graces of her visions as “the historical and spiritual manifestation of God's justifying presence.”⁷⁵ Further, he points out the fact that Ruusbroec in the Espousals distinguishes between visions in which the soul is enlightened through the intervention of Angels, and those in which man is drawn above himself and above the spirit into an incomprehensible richness that God alone can achieve in man. This passage, which is so helpful to us for the understanding of Hadewijch, is of exceptional authority on account of Ruusbroec's perfect familiarity with her writings.⁷⁶ Vekeman also calls attention to significant passages in William of Saint Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Richard of Saint Victor on the function of the Angel in visions.⁷⁷

“Vision 1” deserves the reader's serious study, for, as Spaapen points out, “it offers the most enlightening (even if far from exhaustive) synthesis of Hadewijch's doctrine that she herself has given.”⁷⁸ It falls into two parts; in the first, an Angel guides Hadewijch past seven trees that symbolize virtues; in the second part, the Angel leaves her, and in ecstasy she sees Christ, who speaks to her at considerable length; he especially commands her to live his Humanity, practicing the virtues and accepting all sufferings as he himself did in his life on earth, in order to come to live his Divinity. The two parts of the vision are explained as the life of the virtues and the life of love, or the ascetical life and the mystical life. This progress from one life to the other will be repeated later, for instance in “Visions 6,” “12,” and “14.”

Hadewijch's basic conception of life as dynamic is apparent throughout. At the beginning of the vision she is “still too childish and too little grown-up” (P. 1); but at the first appearance of the Angel, she says: “This same day, having grown up, I had come close to him, so that I had received him … to be my guardian” (P. 24). On leaving her, the Angel says: “I received in your regard the order to be at your service every hour, until the moment when you have outgrown me in the ways in which I have led you” (P. 199). This guardian Angel belongs to the order of Thrones, one of the three highest orders of Angels. In “Vision 13,” when Hadewijch has advanced in perfection, she will be given another guardian, a Seraph, belonging to the highest order of all.

It must not be passed over that “Vision 1” raises a problem for the interpretation of Hadewijch. The problem arises from the complimentary speeches addressed to her by the Angel, who several times asserts that she has already attained to the heights of virtue. The reader, instinctively judging that if Hadewijch were indeed humble she would never have written down these words for the perusal of her young Beguines, may be disconcerted.

To explain this objection we might begin by distinguishing the two parts of “Vision 1.” The compliments are paid to Hadewijch in the first part, by the Angel. But in the second part, she hears herself reproached by Christ himself on three counts. First, she has asked him to recognize her sufferings and virtues, forgetting that he, during his life on earth, bore great sufferings and persevered in work and great love (P. 307). Second, she has said to him sometimes that it was easy for him to live as Man because he possessed the seven gifts, and his Father was with him; in saying this, she did not know that he chose to obtain the gifts at the price of suffering (P. 325). Third, she has complained of her misery and of the fact that she did not receive from him what she needed as she desired; yet at all times she possessed the seven gifts, and his Father was with her (P. 341). Now it is easy to see that Hadewijch, to save face—especially with those whom she was directing—might have concealed these reproaches by changing them into impersonal statements of principle. That she chose rather to reveal them argues in favor of her genuine humility.

Yet another explanation is possible; perhaps these extreme praises served to forewarn Hadewijch that Christ was about to single her out. He did so by a triple command. For his sake, she must be prepared for every kind of affliction (P. 281). To be like him in his Humanity, she must desire to be poor, miserable, and despised by all men (P. 288). And, finally, on earth his life in her must be so fully lived in all virtues that she may in no point fail him in himself (P. 341). Obviously Hadewijch must decide yes or no, and the Angel's words may have helped to strengthen her for this moment.

In “Vision 4” we notice that Hadewijch follows the order of Ptolemaic astronomy when she speaks successively of the moon, the sun, and the stars, whereas the biblical order always places the sun first, for instance in Apocalypse 8:12, a text in some respects parallel to this vision: The fourth angel sounded the trumpet: and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars.

The theme of the Eucharist appears several times in the visions. “Visions 1,” “3,” and “6” all took place after she had received Communion (this is what she means when she speaks of “going to God”). “Vision 1” and “Vision 7” both begin with a description of the stormy longing (orewoet) with which she approached the Eucharist. The extreme vehemence of these two passages is clarified in “Letter 22” (P. 285):

The Son … imparted Christian fruitfulness to us who are called after his name, and who are fed with his name and with his Body, yes, and who partake of him and consume him as eagerly, and fruitfully, and deliciously as we ourselves wish. But in this there is greater disproportion than between the point of a needle and the whole world with the sea thrown in. One could taste and feel incomparably more fruitfulness from God—as he would rightly experience from him—if he sought him with desirous, loving confidence.

“Vision 7” goes on to relate how Christ himself communicated to her under both Species.

“Visions 7” and “8” are actually two parts of the same vision, or at least they took place in immediate succession, as is evident from the last line of “Vision 7.” That there is a profound connection between them is shown by P. Mommaers, who points out that the Champion of “Vision 8” is wanting in the spirituality of love for Christ (which is that of Hadewijch), and this according to his own statement prevents him from attaining the fifth way.⁷⁹

“Visions 10,” “11,” and “12” are strongly marked by images found in the Apocalypse; references to it of course appear in the earlier visions, but are less preponderant. The whole of “Vision 10” follows from the verse: And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Apoc. 21:2). This short vision seems to be more or less prophetic, revealing the ultimate reward of the soul that has been able to live Christ “as God and Man” (P. 54) in the highest possible degree.

“Vision 12,” like “Vision 10,” is centered on the heavenly bride, whose glory in the life to come is prophetically described. Since this vision took place at Mass on Epiphany (January 6), the opening allusion to “the city” may have some relation to the fact that both the Epistle—or, as we now say, the Reading—(Isa. 60:1-6) and the Gospel (Matt. 2:1-13) for that feast mention Jerusalem.

Strongly reminiscent of the Apocalypse, the vision can be summed up in two verses from that book:

The marriage of the Lamb has come, and his spouse has prepared herself. And she has been permitted to clothe herself in fine linen, shining, bright, for the fine linen is the just deeds of the saints.

(Apoc. 19:7-8)

The bride is accompanied by twelve bridesmaids (twelve virtues) who give testimony to her perfection. She is

clad in a robe made of her undivided and perfect will, always devoid of sorrow, and prepared with all virtue, and fitted out with everything that pertains thereto. And that robe was adorned with all the virtues, and each virtue had its symbol on the robe and its name written, that it might be known.

(P. 58)

Then she saw herself, as veritable bride of the great Bridegroom, received in union by him, and she became one with him in the certainty of unity.

“Vision 13” shows a marked structural resemblance to “Vision 1.” Both visions are made up of two parts. In both, the first part falls into seven sections, during which Hadewijch enjoys the help of a specially appointed angelic guide. Again, in both, Hadewijch finds herself in the second part in the presence of Christ in “Vision 1,” and in the presence of Mary in “Vision 13.” In both, Christ, or Mary, speaks to Hadewijch at some length; and in both it is evident that the wonder and mystery of the meeting call for complete reverence, and that Hadewijch can only listen without uttering a word. A striking feature of “Vision 13” is the effect of constant music in the background. Hadewijch's often-repeated allusions to songs of praise, the cry and songs of the Seraphim, the songs of the spirits in the amplitude of the Countenance, and so on, all serve to create a pattern of extraordinary beauty. Her description of Love as a queen enthroned follows all the canons of twelfth-century rhetoric; she begins with Love's head and ends with her feet. In surprising contrast, Hadewijch gives us no description of Mary, stating only that all in the small company of persons among whom Mary was the twenty-ninth—that is to say, the highest—were adorned like Love as to all their attire and ornaments; and she had said previously that Love was richly arrayed, and wore on her head a crown adorned with the works of humility. …

Notes

1. Cf. Simone Roisin, L'hagiographie Cistercienne dans le diocèse de Liège au xiii^e siècle (Brussels: Editions Universitaires, 1947).

2. Van Mierlo, Hadewijch, een Bloemlezing (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1950), p. 14.

3. Stephanus Axters, O.P., Geschiedenis van de vroomheid in den Nederlanden, vol. 1 (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1950), p. 344.

4. Léonce Reypens, S.J., “Een nieuw Hadewijch-handschrift,” OGE 37 (1963): 345. Norbert de Paepe dates it 1510; cf. Hadewijch: Strofische Gedichten (Ghent-Louvain: E. Story-Scientia, 1978), p. 9, note 24.

5. De Wetten van de Minne: met de tekst van Hadewijchs 45 Strofische Gedichten volgens HS. 385 II van het Ruusbroecgenootschap, 2 vols. (Bonheiden: Zusters Benedictinessen Priorij Bethlehem, [1977]).

6. Van Mierlo, Bloemlezing, p. 17; Jean Baptiste Porion, O.Cart., “Hadewijch, mystique flamande et poétesse, 13^e siècle,” DS 7 (1968): 15. Porion in Hadewijch d'Anvers: Ecrits mystiques des Beguines (Paris: Seuil, 1954), pp. 40-41, said that the doubts cast on the authenticity of the “List” have not been proved.

7. Axters, Geschiedenis, vol. 1, p. 345.

8. Alcuin Mens, Oorsprong en betekenis van de Nederlandse Begijnen- en Begarden- beweging (Antwerp: Standaard, 1944), pp. 409-427.

9. Jacques de Vitry, Secundus Sermo ad Virgines, quoted by Ernest McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture: With special emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954), p. 433.

10. Jacques de Vitry, Epistola prima; see R. Röhricht, Briefe des Jacobus de Vitriaco, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 14 (1894): 103.

11. For Van Mierlo's opinion, see Brieven, vol. 1, p. 214. Cf. Porion, Hadewijch, Lettres spirituelles: Béatrice de Nazareth, Sept degrés d'amour, traduction du moyen-néerlandais (Geneva: Martingay, 1972), p. 194, note 1.

12. Barnard Spaapen, S.J., “Hadewijch en het vijfde Visioen,” OGE (1970): 391.

13. Gosuin of Bossut, Vita Idae Nivellensis, 32, in Chrysostom Henriquez, Quinque prudentes virgines (Antwerp, 1630), pp. 284-285.

14. Letters 2: P. 14; 16: P. 56; 24: P. 1. Stanzaic Poem 8:26.

15. Vita Beatricis: de autobiographie van de Z. Beatrijs van Tienen O. Cist. (1200-1268), ed. L. Reypens, S. J. (Antwerp: Ruusbroecgenootschap, 1964), cf. 1.2.19, pp. 23-24; 1.3.21, p. 25; and 1.6.35, p. 33.

16. Vita Idae Lewensis 2.6.13, in Acta Sanctorum, October, vol. 13 (Paris, 1883), p. 112. Cf. Reypens, “Ida van Zoutleeuw of Ida van Gorsleeuw?”, OGE 26 (1952): 329-334.

17. The school of love is mentioned in the following Stanzaic Poems: 2:66; 6:54; 7:61; 11:48; 14, in five stanzas; 16:99; 28:48-54; and also in Poem 13:30.

18. Theodor Weevers, Poetry of the Netherlands in its European Context 1170-1931 (London, 1960), p. 35.

19. On the question of the models used by Hadewijch, see H. Schottmann, “Die Natureingang in den Liedern Hadewijchs,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 93 (1971): 213-227.

20. Cf. Porion, Hadewijch d'Anvers, pp. 118-119; Alan of Lille, De planctu naturae, quaest. 6 (ML 210: 455-456).

21. Cf. H. Rahner, S. J., “Dreifaltigkeit,” Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche², 3, 553.

22. J. Daniélou, S.J., Platonisme et théologie mystique: doctrine spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse, new ed. (Paris: Aubier, 1953), pp. 292-295.

23. The text of this lengthy poem is printed under Hildebert of Lavardin (ML 171:1411); only the title, with cross reference, under Peter Abelard (ML 178: 1818).

24. Sententiarum Libri Tres, 1.2.3 (ML 83:546).

25. The Antiquities of the Jews, 11.3.2-6, in The Life and Works of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston, 1737 (Philadelphia: Winston reprint, 1957), pp. 324-325; Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica, Esdras 3 (ML 198: 1481).

26. Axters, Geschiedenis, vol. 1, pp. 367-368. Hadewijch: Strophische Gedichten, ed. Van Mierlo (Antwerp: Standaard, 1942), vol. 2, p. 121.

27. Norbert De Paepe, Hadewijch Strofische Gedichten. Een studie van de minne in het kader der 12^e en 13^e eeuwse mystiek en profane minnelyriek (Ghent: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie, 1967), p. 331.

28. Spaapen, “Een boek over de minne bij Hadewijch,” Streven 21: 811-813. A similar view is expressed by P. Mommaers in his forthcoming article “Hadewijch” in the Verfasserlexikon: “We truly wonder, however, whether his [De Paepe's] interpretation does not lose sight of the objective, divine reality to which this term certainly also refers.”

29. De Trinitate, 10.11-12.17-19 (ML 42:982-984).

30. William NDA, 2.3 (ML 184:382). Cf. Porion, Hadewijch, Lettres, p. 173, note 9; and Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, trans. A. Downes, 2nd ed. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), pp. 203-204.

31. R. Vanneste, “Over de betekenis van enkele abstracta in de taal van Hadewijch,” Studia Germanica 1 (1959): 84.

32. Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, De diversis sermo XLV, 1; OB 6-1: 262: “Memory becomes powerless and weak, reason imprudent and darkened, and the will impure and unclean.”

33. Cf. Letter 28: P. 80, 101; Letter 30; Vision 11: P. 70; Vision 12: P. 105, P. 140, P. 152; Poem 16:191-196.

34. Porion, Hadewijch, Lettres, pp. 24-25.

35. In Brieven, vol. 1, p. 136.

36. Porion, Hadewijch, Lettres, p. 25.

37. Brieven, vol. 1, pp. 265-276; cf. Van Mierlo, “Adelwip,” Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Vlaamsche Academie (1933): 581-598; and “De Adelwip uittreksels,” ibid. (1934): 537-555.

38. F. Gooday, “Eine bisher unbekannte Hadewijch-Übersetzung,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 102 (1973): 236-238.

39. Axters, Geschiedenis, vol. 2 (1953), pp. 138-149.

40. Lode Moereels, “Giovanni di Ruysbroeck, beato,” Bibliotheca Sanctorum, vol. 6 (1965), p. 881.

41. Letter 17; Ruusbroec, Dat Rijcke der ghelieven, 5: W vol. 1, pp. 99-100, lines 33-17.

42. Poem 16:30-40; Dat Rijcke, W vol. 1, p. 52, lines 14-25.

43. Porion, “Hadewijch, mystique,” DS 7:21. See also Axters, Geschiedenis, vol. 2, pp. 270-273.

44. Vision 1: P. 341 (lines 351-356); Ruusbroec, Die gheestelike brulocht, W vol. 1, p. 111, lines 15-18; pp. 121-122, lines 32-4.

45. Letter 17: P. 11, P. 66, and P. 74: Brulocht, W vol. 1, p. 174, lines 13-25; p. 239, lines 17-20; pp. 248-249, lines 23-19.

46. Letter 12: P. 174; Brulocht, W vol. 1, p. 224, lines 8-9.

47. Letters 6: P. 227; 19: P. 46; 22: P. 90; 28: P. 121; Vision 7: P. 14; Brulocht, W vol. 1, p. 240, lines 13-15.

48. Letter 22: P. 348; Brulocht, W vol. 1, pp. 246-247.

49. Vision 1: P. 185; Brulocht, W vol. 1, p. 141, lines 26-28.

50. Letter 20: P. 113; Brulocht, W vol. 1, p. 200, lines 28-30.

51. Poems in Stanzas 30:46; 19:15-16; 6:69-72; Ruusbroec, Vanden XIJ Beghinen, W vol. 4, p. 4, Stanzaic Poem 11:88-89; Vanden XIJ Beghinen, p. 5, lines 16-17.

52. Letter 20: P. 97; Ruusbroec, Van seven trappen, W vol. 3, p. 268.

53. Cf. Gilson, The Mystical Theology, pp. 70-73.

54. Ruusbroec, The Spiritual Espousals, trans. E. Colledge (New York: Harper, 1953), p. 180.

55. See Van Mierlo's lists in Brieven, vol. 1, p. 307, and in Visionen, vol. 2, p. 114.

56. Cf. Visions 2: P. 18, and 3: P. 8 and note.

57. Cf. Van Mierlo, “Hadewijch en Willem van St.-Thierry,” OGE 3 (1929): 45-59; Axters, Geschiedenis, vol. 1, p. 375; and P. Verdeyen, “De invloed van Willem van Saint-Thierry op Hadewijch en Ruusbroec,” OGE 51 (1977): 3-19.

58. Cf. Marie Schalij, “Richard van St. Victor en Hadewijchs 10^e Brief,” TNTL 62 (1943): 219-228.

59. Beatrijs van Nazareth. Van seuen manieren van heileger minnen, ed. H. Vekeman and J. Tersteeg (Zutphen: Thieme, [1970]).

60. Porion, Hadewijch, Lettres, p. 217.

61. Jef Janssens, “Hadewijch en de riddercultur van haar tijd,” Ons geestelijk Leven 54 (1977): 156-157.

62. Jannsens, ibid., p. 163.

63. Tornada is the Provençal term for a concluding stanza that is shorter than the rest and repeats some of the rhymes of the stanza immediately preceding it.

64. Bosch, “Vale milies: De structuur van Hadewijch's bundel ‘Strofische Gedichten,’” TNTL 90 (1974): 173-175.

65. Ibid., pp. 161-182.

66. De Paepe, Hadewijch (1967), p. 224, p. 215.

67. H. Schottmann, “Autor und Hörer in den ‘Strophischen Gedichten’ Hadewijchs,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 75 (1973): 34-35.

68. G. Kazemier, “Hadewijch en de minne in haar Strofische Gedichten,” TNTL 87 (1971): 255-257. J. Reynaert, “Het doodsmotief bij Hadewijch,” Studia Germanica Gandensis 17 (1976): 8, does not speak explicitly of imprisonment or execution.

69. T. Brandsma, O. Carm., “Wanneer schreef Hadewych hare Visioenen?”, Studia Catholica 2 (1926): 240-247.

70. McDonnell, The Beguines, p. 491.

71. Cf. Spaapen (1970) 11; Vekeman, “Hadewijch,” p. 360.

72. Benjamin Major, 5.12 (ML 196: 180-182).

73. Gunnar Qvarnström, Poetry and numbers: on the structural use of symbolic numbers (Lund: Gleerup, 1966), pp. 24-25.

74. Visioenen, vol. 2 (1925), p. 52; and Hadewijch: een Bloemlezing, p. 16. See De Paepe, Hadewijch (1967), pp. 149-151. Cf. Spaapen (1970): 36-37; and (1972): 198-199.

75. Vekeman, “Angelus sane nuntius. Een interpretatie van het visioenenboek van Hadewijch,” OGE 50 (1976): 259.

76. Ruusbroec, Brulocht, W vol. 1, pp. 163-164, trans. Colledge, The Spiritual Espousals, p. 107.

77. Vekeman, “Angelus,” p. 240.

78. Spaapen (1970): 9.

79. Visioenen, vol. 1, p. 79; cf. P. Mommaers, “Het VII^e en VIII^e Visioen van Hadewijch: affectie in de mystieke beleving,” OGE 49 (1975): 110.

Abbreviations

Bernard SC: Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica.

CCSL: Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout, 1954-).

DS: Dictionnaire de spiritualité (Paris, 1932-).

MG: Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca. Ed. J. Migne.

ML: Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina. Ed. J. Migne.

OB: Sancti Bernardi Opera. Ed. J. Leclercq, C. F. Talbot, H. M. Rochais (Rome, 1957-).

OGE: Ons geestelijk erf (Antwerp, 1927-).

SC: Sources chrétiennes, ed. H. de Lubac and J. Daniélou (Paris, 1942-).

Spaapen: Bernard Spaapen, S. J., “Hadewijch en het vijfde Visioen.” The five sections of this article, published in OGE, will be identified by date (1970-1972) and page numbers.

TNTL: Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde. (Leiden, 1885-).

VBS: Hadewijch: Brieven. Trans. [into modern Dutch] F. Van Bladel, S. J., and B. Spaapen, S. J. (Tielt: Lannoo, 1954.)

W. Ruusbroec, Werken. 4 vols. 2nd ed. (Tielt: Lannoo, 1944-1948.)

William NDA: William of St. Thierry, De natura et dignitate amoris.

Bibliography

Texts

Van Mierlo, Jozef, S. J. Hadewijch: Visionen. 2 vols. Louvain: Vlaamsch Boekenhalle, 1924-25.

———Hadewijch: Strophische Gedichten. 2 vols. Antwerp: Standaard, 1942.

———Hadewijch: Brieven. 2 vols. Antwerp: Standaard, 1947.

———Hadewijch: Mengeldichten. Antwerp: Standaard, 1952.

Studies

Porion, Jean-Baptiste, O. Cart. “Hadewijch, mystique flamande et poétesse, 13^e siècle.” DS 7:13-23.

Schottmann, Hans. “Autor und Hörer in der ‘Strophischen Gedichten’ Hadewijchs.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutschen Literatur 102 (1973): 20-37.

Spaapen, B., S. J. “Hadewijch en het vijfde visioen.” OGE 44-46 (1970-1972).

———“Een boek over de minne bij Hadewijch.” Streven 21 (1968): 811-813.

Van Mierlo, J. “Hadewijch, une mystique flamande du 13^e siècle.” Revue d'ascétique et de mystique 5 (1924): 269-289, 380-404.

Vanneste, R. “Over de betekenis van enkele abstracta in de taal van Hadewijch.” Studia Germanica 1 (1959): 9-95.

Vekeman, Herman. “Hadewijch, een interpretatie van de Br. I, II, XXVIII, XXIX als dokumenten over de strijd rond de wezensmystiek.” TNTL 90 (1974): 337-366.

———“Angelus sane nuntius. Een interpretatie van het visioenenboek van Hadewijch.” OGE 50 (1976): 225-259.

English Bibliography on Hadewijch

Axters, Stephanus, O. P. The spirituality of the old Low Countries. Trans. Donald Attwater. London: Blackfriars, 1954, pp. 9-40; 84-85.