SOURCE: Madigan, Shawn. “Hadewijch (Thirteenth Century): I Am All Love's and Love Is All Mine.” In Mystics, Visionaries, and Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women's Spiritual Writings, edited by Shawn Madigan, C.S.J., pp. 166-90. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1998.

[In the following excerpt, Madigan introduces Hadewijch's love songs and provides background information regarding her status as a thirteenth-century beguine.]

Hadewijch probably lived in the thirteenth century, a century of many diverse movements. On the one hand, the papacy had reached a height of political power. On the other hand, the papal office had lost its influence as a spiritual and moral force. There was an increased desire for authentic religious experience among many of the clergy and laity. At the same time, there was an abundance of heretical groups as well. Scholastic theology with its Aristotelian reflections on faith dominated the university scene. A more experiential affective theology and spirituality flourished among other groups. A few sentences about each of these diverse strands may further the understanding of the age in which Hadewijch likely lived and wrote.¹

The last pope of the twelfth century, Innocent III (1198-1216), brought the papal office to the summit of political power even as that office began its decline as a spiritual and moral force. The Decretals of Gratian had provided legal and juridical arguments for the superiority of the power and prerogatives of the papacy. From this point on, the reforms begun by successive popes would mean reform of political and ecclesial institutions, but not reform of the papal power and its papal court, the Curia.

Like campaigns earlier, which started with the intent of winning the world for Christ, the crusades of the thirteenth century continued with the same fervor. In retrospect, in “winning the world for Jesus Christ,” the crusades brought about the death of many thousands of people and caused irreparable destruction of cities, cultures, and the bonds between Eastern and Western Christianity.² The Children's Crusade of 1212 resulted in the death or enslavement of thousands of French and German children. Two later crusades in the century succeeded in doing nothing more than costing lives on both sides.

The monastic and cathedral schools that developed through the twelfth century began to serve the needs of growing cities by the end of that century. In the thirteenth century, groups of these schools came together to form the universities in major cities such as Paris and Bologna. The best of Greek thought, particularly that of Aristotle, influenced the mode of thinking about faith. The monumental work of Dominicans like Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) furthered a systematic and reasonable approach to Christian faith.

At the same time, there was more of a renewal than simply thinking about faith. New apostolic orders, for example, the Dominicans and Franciscans, grew as people felt called to a more apostolic way of life, a way of life manifested in the sharing of goods, the renunciation of wealth, and in care for the poor, orphans, the sick, and the aged (Matt 5:3-12; Luke 10:1-10). Voluntary poverty was undertaken by many laity and clergy as a criticism of the abuses of wealth and power by some of the church hierarchy, including the popes and the Curia. Various thirteenth-century popes called for reform of the church as an institution. They and their papal court were skilled, however, at resisting the pressure to reform. By the end of the century, the papacy would be simply a well-organized bureaucracy that secured a steady flow of money into its coffers to keep the Curia running well.³

The perceived value of women in the thirteenth century was extremely low, and they were treated as a surplus commodity. Canon law allowed wife beating if a woman did not obey her husband. The twelfth-century theologian Peter Lombard had tried to alter this perception of a wife as her husband's property:

God did not make woman from Adam's head, for she was not intended to be his ruler; nor from his feet, for she was not intended to be his slave; but from his side, for she was intended to be his companion and friend.⁴

In spite of Lombard's efforts, women were still considered to be essentially inferior to men. Society and the church believed that men needed to channel the religious energies of women to curtail excessive enthusiasm, heresy, or other abuses to which women were judged to be susceptible. At the same time, the religious enthusiasm of the time, which affected men as well as women, left women without an organized way to live out their apostolic call. Men could be clerics, monks, canons, or join any number of male communities. Women had the option of joining a cloistered community, and these were linked to male religious orders, many of whom refused to supervise or add on more dependent convents of women. The only other options for women were to be solitaries and live under some form of pious rule in their own homes, or to become recluses attached to a monastery or church.

Another popular option was to become a Beguine. In the thirteenth century, the Beguines posed a challenge to both social and ecclesial perceptions of women's place. The Beguines were more of a movement than an official order. Their day-to-day lives were shaped by their piety and their response to a more intense Christian life. Each particular group of Beguines could develop its own rule of life and order of the day. Aspiring Beguines lived under the direction of a more experienced Beguine. The daily order of their life included attendance at Mass when possible, the divine office, prayers in honor of Mary and the passion of Christ, meditative reading and contemplation, communal penance, and monthly confession. Vigils and major feasts were days for recollection.

Groups of Beguines who lived in community also had houses for widows or other women who were not members of the group but needed a place of refuge that would be free from the plundering and abuse that often came to single women. The activities of the Beguines included education of poor as well as economically stable boys and girls, care for the sick and elderly, aid to the outcasts of society, training of housewives to run their estates, arts and crafts, and contemplative prayer.⁵

The reaction toward the Beguines ranged from sincere admiration for their holiness to great disgust and fear. Some churchmen like Lambert Le Begue and Jacques de Vitry, the bishop of Liège who helped organize the movement, felt the Beguines were the new mothers of the church. The saintly Marie d'Oignies (1177-1213), was an enthusiastic patron and promoter of the Beguines.⁶ This woman's holiness was acknowledged by many. On the other hand, the Second Council of Lyons and the Council of Vienne judged the group as a whole quite harshly.

In spite of the mixed reviews the Beguines were getting in the thirteenth century, Hadewijch joined the movement. Little is actually known about her. If a life of Hadewijch was written, it has not survived. It is known that she lived in the thirteenth century and that her works were familiar to the Canons Regular of Windesheim and the Carthusians of Diest by the fourteenth century.

Her familiarity with the language and customs of chivalry and courtly love suggests that she was born into a higher class. Wherever she acquired her education, she had amassed a broad range of knowledge. Her works indicate an ability to use metaphors that were part of the academic curriculum. She is familiar with the Latin language, rules of rhetoric, numerology, Ptolemaic astronomy, music theory, the church fathers, and most canonical twelfth-century writers.

She may have founded a Beguine group or else she became a leader of such a group. Her letters provide a clear indication that she is a spiritual director for younger Beguines. A theme that runs throughout her works is apparent in her letters directed to them. Love ought to be the dominant quality of their life:

The greatest radiance anyone can have on earth is truth in works of justice performed in imitation of the Son, and to practice the truth with regard to all that exists, for the glory of the noble love that God is.

(1 John 4:16)⁷

Her theological perspectives on self-knowledge differ from those of Bernard of Clairvaux, whose works influenced her. Bernard stressed that self-knowledge would lead to the awareness that humans are in fact poor images of God because of their sinfulness. Hadewijch stresses that self-knowledge should not stop with the awareness of personal poverty, but go on to recognize that God's power is greater than human weakness:

Anyone who is truly faithful will know that the goodness of the Beloved is greater than human failure … live for God in such a way, this I implore you, that you be not wanting in the great works to which God has called you.⁸

The extant works of Hadewijch include thirty-one letters, forty-five poems in stanzas, fourteen visions, and sixteen poems in couplets. “Letter 6” is a manifesto about the Beguine way of life, detailing what it means to live love in the world of her time and in a community of apostolic women. “Letter 11” is an autobiographical one that describes her own journey into the meaning of love. The frequent reference to love as the core of Christian spirituality and its thematic reappearance places Hadewijch in the school of “love mysticism.”

This mysticism, reflected in Bernard of Clairvaux and others, shifts the scholastic focus from intellectual knowledge of God to experiential love of God. There are different shades of meaning for love as Hadewijch uses the term. In some cases it is an experience and in others it is the beloved, a person.

The romantic tradition and the Middle Dutch tradition of love songs have affected the poetic reflections of Hadewijch. The images of courtly love, of a lover who is never quite attainable, of the submissive service to love, and the complaints against the power of love and its paradox are part of this courtly love tradition. The tension between “having” love and “losing” love runs throughout her works. She is probably writing in the period when the courtly poetry of the Netherlands was at its height. At the same time, it is not copied by Hadewijch, for her own experiences and expressions that illumine divine and human love relationships are uniquely her own.⁹

Whatever role Hadewijch had in the Beguine community, there seems to have been opposition to her as time went on. It has been mentioned earlier that various groups in the church did not look upon women like the Beguines with favor. Their independence from ecclesiastical control made them a source of dissension. Their public teaching and reading from the Scriptures in the vernacular caused concern. Although Hadewijch seems to have been more of a recluse than a wandering Beguine teacher, her life was not one of simple repose. Scholars generally believe that the Beguine community evicted her. This could be the reason for her pain of separation from her sister Beguines, namely, Sara, Margriet, and Emma:

But I, unhappy as I am, ask this with love from all of you—who should offer me comfort in my pains, solace in my sad exile, and peace and sweetness. I wander alone and must remain far from him to whom I belong. … Why does he hold me so far from him and from those who are his?¹⁰

Hadewijch had been so consistent in her urgings of the Beguines to care for the sick that she may have spent her own last days offering her services to a leprosarium or to the sick poor. In such settings, she could not only nurse the sick but also have ready access to the chapel or church that was always attached to these kinds of establishments. Unfortunately, no more is known of her last years than is known of her early years. When and where she died has been lost to history.

In the excerpts from her love songs …, it will be seen that love is a paradox for Hadewijch. Yet she seems to enjoy the challenge of the paradoxical presence and absence of her beloved. The demands of love are like food that satisfies but simultaneously leaves even deeper hungers. One engaged in the love chase may have ever-deepening love, but then “the more crushing her burden” (“2”). Love consoles, gives peace, and empowers noble hearts to hold firmly to the challenge (“2,” “3,” “5,” “7,” “8”), even though there are conflicts that can make one weary. There can be no true love without sacrifice that enables setbacks to be overcome (“6,” “9,” “10”).

Hadewijch dares to enter the wilderness of the ambiguous journey and encourages others to “risk the adventure” (“6”). She is assured that what seems like loss is actually gain (“2”); no action is lost, in spite of appearances. In the end, more is given than taken (“4”). Love is always faithful, although it can seem like love has abandoned the lover. Limited comprehension of the mystery of divine love is the cause of not understanding the love that humans receive. At the same time, the pain involved in the desire for greater love can open the heart to ever-increasing proportions for experiencing the mystery of eternal love.

Notes

1. R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church of the Middle Ages (New York: Pelican, 1976) 100-132, 272-309.

2. The fourth crusade, which destroyed the city of Constantinople in 1204, resulted in a tragic separation of Eastern and Western branches of Catholic Christianity, a separation that still exists.

3. John C. Dwyer, Church History: Twenty Centuries of Catholic Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1985) 172-91.

4. Peter Lombard, Opera omnia, tomus primus. 191-92 liber secundus. “De rerum corporalium et spiritualium creatione et formatione, aliisque pluribus eo pertinentibus.” Distinctio 18. “De formatione mulierus.” 3 (Aug. lib. 9 de Gen. ad litteram, cap. 13). C 688, in Migne, Patrologia Latina 191-92.

5. Fiona Bowie, ed., Beguine Spirituality: An Anthology (London: SPCK, 1989); Ernest McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954) 1-49.

6. Brenda Bolton, “Vitae Matrum: A Further Aspect of the Frauenfrage,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978) 253-73.

7. Hadewijch, “Letter 1,” “In God’s Radiance,” in Hadewijch: The Complete Works, trans. Mother Columba Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1980) 1:18, 47.

8. “Letter 2,” “Serve Nobly,” ibid. 2:3, 2:39, 48-49.

9. Ria Vanderauwera, “The Brabant Mystic, Hadewijch,” in Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katharina Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984) 186-93.

10. “Letter 26,” “Coping with Separation,” Hart, Hadewijch, 26:24, 26:31, 106-7.

Bibliography

Bolton, Brenda. “Vitae Matrum: A Further Aspect of the Frauenfrage.” In Medieval Women. Edited by Derek Baker. Oxford: Blackwell, 1978. 253-73.

Bowie, Fiona, ed. Beguine Spirituality: An Anthology. London: SPCK, 1989.

Dwyer, John C. Church History: Twenty Centuries of Catholic Christianity. New York: Paulist Press, 1985.

Hart, Mother Columba, trans. Hadewijch: The Complete Works. New York: Paulist Press, 1980.

Southern, R. W. Western Society and the Church of the Middle Ages. New York: Pelican, 1976.

Vanderauwera, Ria. “The Brabant Mystic, Hadewijch.” In Medieval Women Writers. Edited by Katharina Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984.