HADEWIJCH (the Dutch equivalent of ‘Hedwig’), 13th–cent. contemplative writer. She spoke the dialect of Brabant and a number of passages from her Visions and letters suggest that she belonged to a community of Beguines. Nothing is known of her life except what can be deduced from her works, which show that she was well versed in the Latin Bible, in theology, and in secular French romantic literature. Her Visions, letter-treatises, Poems in Stanzas, and Poems in Couplets all treat of the union of the soul with a God who transcends all union. She reflected deeply on the poetic process. In Letter 17 she explains how she had been moved to compose seemingly artless couplets, alluding to the Trinitarian mysteries and to their reflection in human nature and in her love of the divine and of the human; she concludes that her work surpasses her own expository powers: ‘The kingdom of this earth cannot understand heavenly things, for people can reason about everything on earth and find words enough for it, but I can find neither words nor reason for this’. Though her ‘love-mysticism’ (an unhappy rendering of Brautmystik) was in the tradition of St *Bernard, she was pre-eminent in assimilating this and adapting the concepts and terminology of courtly love for Christian ends. This begs the still-unanswered question whether the language and ideals of mystical theology are derived from earthly models or the other way round. In the 14th cent. her letters are quoted by J. van *Ruysbroeck and were translated into High German, but in modern times direct knowledge of her works was recovered only in 1838 when two 14th–cent. manuscripts in Brussels were studied and in 1857 positively identified as hers. A number of the Poems in Couplets (25–9), however, are now attributed to a follower, ‘Hadewijch II’, herself greatly gifted, and the authorship of others (17–24) is disputed.

Crit. edn. of Flemish texts by J. van Mierlo, SJ: De visioenen, 2 vols., Louvain, 1924–5; Strophische gedichten [Poems in Stanzas], 2 vols., Antwerp, 1942; Brieven [Letters], 2 vols., ibid., 1947; and Mengeldichten [Poems in Couplets] (incl. texts of Hadewijch II), ibid., 1952. New edns. of the Visions by P. Mommaers (Nijmegen [1979]), H. W. J. Vekeman (ibid., 1980), and, with Ger.tr., by G. Hofmann (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1998). New edn. of the Strofische gedichten by E. Rombauts and N. de Paepe (Zwolle, 1961). Poetry also ed., with Eng. tr., by M. J. E. H. T. van Baest (Louvain, 1998). Letters re-ed. by P. Mommaers (Averbode and Kampen, 1990). Eng. tr. of Complete Works [excl. works of Hadewijch II] by C. Hart, OSB (Classics of Western Spirituality, 1981). J. Reynaert, De Beeldspraak van Hadewijch (Tielt, 1981); P. Mommaers and F. Willaert, ‘Mystisches Erlebnis und sprachliche Vermittlung in den Briefen Hadewijchs’, in P. Dinzelbacher and D. R. Bauer (eds.), Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter (Cologne, 1988), pp. 117–51; P. Mommaers, Hadewijch [in Dutch] (Averbode and Kempen, 1989; Eng. tr., Louvain, 2004). S. M. M. Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hadewijch’s Mengeldichten (Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 536; 1991); J. Reynaert, ‘Hadewijch: mystic poetry and courtly love’, in E. Kooper (ed.), Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 208–25. K. Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, 2 (Munich, 1993), pp. 160–232; B. McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism (New York [1998]), pp. 200–22, with notes, pp. 416–26; B. Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, Pa. [2003]), pp. 169–81. J.-B. M. Porion, O. Cart., in Dict. Sp. 7 (1969), cols. 13–23, s.v.

An Anthology of Christian Mysticism Harvey D. Egan, S.J. (The Liturgical Press Collegeville, Minnesota, 1991) Pp, 225-233

 The Flemish Beguine, Hadewijch, is perhaps the most sublime exponent of love mysticism in the Western tradition. This deeply emotional, ecstatic, visionary, and bridal form of mysticism contends that God allows himself to be experienced as love by a person who ardently desires to be united with God in this life.

HADEWIJCH OF ANTWERP

This Flemish Beguine is perhaps the most sublime exponent of love mysticism in the Western mystical tradition. Love mysticism contends that God allows himself to be experienced as Love by a person who ardently desires to love and to be united with God in this life. In addition, this love is usually deeply emotional, ecstatic, visionary, and bridal. So traumatic is this holy madness at times that the visionary’s physical well-being and even life are endangered.

Hadewijch was a Beguine, that is, a woman who lived a semi-religious community life, but without vows. The Beguines were pious women who seem to have rejected both a woman’s constricted life at court and the stricter obligations of the cloistered life. Much like the primitive monastic tradition in which a spiritual father gathered disciples around him without ecclesiastical sanction, the early stages of the Beguine movement saw laywomen uniting in much the same way. Embracing a loose form of community life, apostolic poverty, contemplation, and recitation of the hours, they also studied, taught, gave spiritual direction, and cared for the sick and the needy.

The name “Beguine” may be derived either from the name of Lambert le Bègue (d.1177), a revivalist preacher at Liège, or from the gray cloth of their distinctive garb. Perhaps because of their threatening independence, holiness of life, good works—and, occasionally, eccentricities and unorthodox beliefs—the Beguines were frequently the object of clerical and lay criticism. Nonetheless, Pope Honorius III gave them full ecclesiastical authorization in 1216.

The Beguines’ spirituality was influenced by the Crusades. Sharply focused on the mysteries of the humanity of Christ’s life, especially his childhood and passion, this spirituality was also strongly eucharistic and Marian.

The main theme throughout Hadewijch’s writings is the tumultuous longing for the infinite joy of possessing a God who is love. She had experienced this love so deeply that she learned in a vision: “The seraph who had lifted me up placed me upon it [a seat] and said to me: ‘Behold, this is love, whom you see in the midst of the countenance of God’s nature; she has never yet been shown here to a created being....’“‘ Hadewijch never sought or clung to her ecstatic experiences, but saw them as part of her need to “grow up” in the Lord. She experienced that she became the brave knight of divine Love who knows “what love teaches with love and how love honors the loyal lover with love.i²

The joys and sufferings encountered by the soul in its longing for God fill Hadewijch’s works. Love is an abyss not only of joy, bliss, peace, and “unheard of songs,” but also of violent storms and terrifying, horrible, and awesome places. For her, “to carry love means a propensity, a longing, a desire, a service, an incessant exercise of burning will. But to feel love means the awareness of being in the liberty of love. But to be love surpasses all.i³

The Hadewijch corpus shows astonishing literary versatility, tremendous emotional and intellectual range, and profound spirituality and mysticism. In some love mysticisms, affective and religious emotions become an end in themselves and never take advantage of theological and doctrinal support. This is definitely not the case with Hadewijch who had assimilated scripture, the church’s liturgy, Augustine, William of St. Thierry, and other church fathers.

Moreover, her theological exemplarism provides a solid foundation for her love mysticism. According to this view, the human person is created in the image of God, but the image was sullied by Adam’s sin. Because the soul is “Christ’s mother,” it must give birth to the divine infant. In this way, it recovers its trinitarian image and ascends to the triune God.

One also finds elements of an “ontological” mysticism (Wesensmystik) in Hadewijch. This speculative mysticism emphasizes the unity-in-difference between God as Being and the person as a being. It ponders the extreme “nakedness” (devoid of all concepts and images) of the divine-human intercourse in the soul’s “ground.” It stresses that the whole spiritual life consists in a return to God by poverty, detachment, and nakedness. Extreme forms of Wesensmystik emphasized that persons attained their goal by keeping themselves free from all works, save “pure love alone,” a love that eventually annihilates them in the abyss of the divine essence. Through pure love, they become God.

However, Hadewijch never tires, for christological reasons, of emphasizing the need to live a fully human ascetical-mystical life. While maintaining that one is never absorbed into the divine, Hadewijch insists that one must “become God with God.” For her, when plunged in love, one returns to the world with “impressionable senses” that are even more open to all worldly reality and a readiness to serve others.

Her 31 Letters illustrate her educated intelligence, the striking artistry of her prose writing, the importance of self-knowledge, and how the mystical life is the full flowering of the truths of faith. Poems in Stanzas show, in 45 poems, her lyric and poetic genius that made full use of the themes, imagery, and techniques of the troubadours who sang the praises of courtly love. In fact, Hadewijch fused the poetry of courtly love, the latin sequence of the church’s liturgy, and a christianized Minne (love) mysticism that created a new genre of medieval mystical poetry.

She also had numerous visions “in the spirit” and “out of the spirit.” Her 14 recorded visions emphasize the necessity of becoming “one with God in fruition.” Poems in Couplets illustrate her aphoristic and improvising mastery in underscoring God’s love for us and our love for God. Some of these poems are deeply eucharistic. They teach that when we eat Christ, he eats us, for the “heart of each devours the other’s heart.”

Hadewijch’s love, or “seraphic,” mysticism is deeply trinitarian and christogical. Like the great Eastern church fathers before her, Hadewijch sees the Father as the source without source of the divine life and fecundity. The human person “lives the Trinity” by emulating the trinitarian inhalation into unity and exhalation into Trinity by turning inward in contemplation and outward in virtue and apostolic service, an idea that Ruusbroec was to develop.

If one is to “grow up in order to be God with God,” one must “live God and man.” Said christologically, “We all indeed wish to be God with God, but God knows there are few of us who want to live as men with his humanity, or want to carry his cross with him, or want to hang on the cross with him and pay humanity’s debt to the full.i⁴ Hadewijch’s Christology points out the human paradox: to be divine, one must be fully human, as Christ was. Her “to live God and man” became a sharp sword against the Brethren of the Free Spirit who wanted to be God without remaining human.

The first selected text is perhaps the most beautiful description in the Christian mystical tradition of the soul’s greatness. Only the soul can reach God’s abyss; only God can reach and satisfy the soul’s abyss.

The second selection illustrates Hadewijch’s poetic and literary genius. One senses her passionate love of Love and her willingness to allow Love to conquer her so that she may conquer Love. In the agony and ecstasy of love, “love, by Love, sees to the depths of the Beloved,” and attains true freedom. Love also enlightens the soul’s darker half to make the soul one in divine light.

The third text was selected to illustrate Hadewijch’s ecstatic visionary love mysticism. She is so full of desire to satisfy and be satisfied by her Beloved that she is mad with love. This madness affects her heart and veins, and even threatens to break her bodily. Hadewijch ardently longs to be conformed fully to “his Humanity” and “to grow up to be God with God.”

In ecstatic vision, she sees an eagle (common in her writings), a Child at the altar, and the “Man.” This vision brings out her eucharistic mysticism: the Christ Child comes from the altar to give her the sacrament. However, it is the “Man” who actually gives her the “Sacrament,” the chalice, and then takes her into his arms. As she melts into her Beloved, they are “one without a difference.”

This medieval woman possesses an astonishing subtlety of feeling in her ability to teach us how to grow in trinitarian love by living Christ both in his divinity and humanity.’

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