[In the following excerpt, Axters sums up Hadewijch's mystical and literary sensibility, arguing that she “spiritualized courtly love” in the thirteenth century.]

The identification of the mystic called Hadewijch has been a nightmare to philologists for nearly a century. One of the latest hypotheses is that of Father J. van Mierlo, S.J., who seeks to identify her with a béguine of Nivelles named Helwig of Saint Cyr, who was buried at the abbey of Villers in 1269. However that may be, it seems to be established that Hadewijch was a béguine, and all her work suggests that she lived during the thirteenth century, probably about the middle. The writings of this person who is rather hard to identify include accounts of visions, letters, a number of strophic verses, and sixteen poems in rimes plates¹. In them she takes her idea of love from the Cistercians, particularly from Beatrice of Nazareth, and gives it an unquestionably metaphysical sense.

The key to Hadewijch's spirituality is given in a phrase of one of her letters—“Love is all”. For her the inner life consists wholly of an ascent, a great endeavour, towards love. Love is the attribute of God. God is love. And the personal character of love is such that the movement towards it becomes a duel between the soul and God, which is the theme of most of Hadewijch's poems. Everyone who looks into himself finds there a pronounced leaning towards God; and Hadewijch, faithful to St Augustine's introversion, calls this the need of the soul. It is because of it that, when the soul has become conscious of herself, the psychic threefold is moved to seek the divine Threefold; we are an image of the Trinity, and that image tries to come close to the Most Holy Trinity. But it will succeed only if it gets at the life which the soul leads in God from all eternity. So Hadewijch is really an exemplarist. She seems indeed to have been the first in the Low Countries to look at human existence from this angle, which at first sight is disconcerting for anybody not familiar with Neoplatonism. As Hadewijch sees it, we are not yet what we are; we have not “spotted” what is already ours; we are still far from that which appertains to us². Allusion to a life which is other than that of every day occurs three times, and is well explained by another passage, in which she reminds a disciple that she must take into consideration the state of dignity in which in the beginning God loved and chose her³. This primeval dignity must not be identified with “original justice”, which Hadewijch seems rather to have in mind in “Letter VI.” It is Hadewijch's pretty unambiguous exemplarism that gives efficacy to the longing of the ternary-image to come closer to its exemplary ternary-cause. The Father pours himself out upon us, sending us the Word; and the Word returns to the bosom of the Father. The Father pours himself out upon us, sending us the Holy Spirit; and calls the Spirit to return to him, together with all that the Spirit has inspired.

It may be noted that Hadewijch says nothing about the return to the bosom of the Father of all creatures comprehended in the Word, archetype of creation: she refers only to that other return which is grafted upon it, of the elect and of all meritorious works, together with the Holy Spirit who has inspired them. She prefers to look at our adherence to the Word according to the historical order of the Redemption rather than according to the ontological order. Our salvation depends on our devotion to Jesus Christ; but the distinction between devotion to his manhood and of devotion to his godhead is always something of an abstraction: in the concrete order they go together. Effective virtues, the humility, brotherly love, patience in adversity that are the essence of Christianity, are learnt in the school of Christ crucified; and this following of the crucified Lord is disinterested. The chosen of God do not serve Love for reward, not even for Heaven itself: their love for him is its own reward—Hadewijch sets this out several times, with arguments in the manner of the “courtly” poets. It is then daily exercise of virtue that prepares the soul for those divine “touches” with which mystical experience begins. We are made like to the Incarnate Word by suffering; and we can return to the bosom of the Father only when steeped in the image of the crucified Son.

These are only a few of the elements in an exceptionally rich body of doctrine. Hadewijch's spirituality is undeniably affective, and examination of it from this point of view can hardly fail to reveal more than one affinity with that of St Bernard. But her outstanding achievement is to have given a metaphysical basis to that spirituality which the Low Countries had received from the Cistercians: Hadewijch's work stamped Neoplatonic exemplarism with an authentic Christocentrism half a century before Rhenish exemplarism had appeared. Nor is that all. Hadewijch did what, in the opinion of Etienne Gilson⁴, St Bernard did not do: she spiritualized courtly love. This was more than simply the use of a score of terms of gallantry, borrowed directly or indirectly from the trouvères of northern France; she took away its human direction from my Lady's service, so that courtly love could be transposed into a metaphysical key, and integrated this regenerated conception of love into a doctrine of mystical experience. …

Notes

1. The reader must be referred to the editions by Father J. van Mierlo, S.J., between 1924 and 1948 (Leuvense Tekstuitgaven series, Louvain), except for the Mengeldichten, which he has not republished since 1912.

2. Brieven, br. VII, 29-32.

3. Brieven, br. XVIII, 7-10.

4. La théologie mystique de saint Bernard (Paris, 1934), p. 215.