Hadewijch of Brabant, Letters and Poems (1220–1240)

The body of religious work written or dictated by women during the thirteenth century is considerable and attests to heightened piety of laypeople across Europe. Often the line between the genres of writing was blurred as ordinary women explored different means of religious expression. Hadewijch of Brabant was one of many such women writers, and our knowledge of her comes primarily from her writings in her native Dutch, which include thirty-one letters, fourteen visions, forty-five stanzaic poems, and several other poems. Although criticized by members of her own, probably Beguine, community, Hadewijch nonetheless typifies many women writers of this period. She uses mystical and seemingly erotic language to describe a relationship with Christ. Love is a central concept throughout her work, which she consistently genders as female. For her, the word refers to her experience of the divine, far removed from the systematic doctrine of scholastic summas. Although some Beguines bordered on the edge of unorthodoxy and were at times accused of heresy, most works by female mystics fit harmoniously with the writings of such church leaders as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and Richard (1123–1173) and Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141).

From “The Brabant Mystic: Hadewijch,” in Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katherina M. Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 193–95, 198–201.

Letter 11

Ah, dear child, may God give you what my heart desires for you, and may you love Him as He deserves. Still, I could never endure, dear child, that someone before me loved God as dearly as I. I believe that many loved Him as fondly and dearly, yet I could hardly bear that someone would know Him with such passion.

From the age of ten I have been overwhelmed with such passionate love that I would have died during the first two years of this experience if God had not granted me a power unknown to common people and made me recover with His own being. For He soon granted me reason, sometimes enlightened with many wonderful revelations, and I received many wonderful gifts from Him, when He let me feel His presence and showed Himself to me. I was aware of many signs that were between Him and me, as with friends who are used to concealing little and revealing much when their feelings for each other have grown most intimate, when they taste, eat, and drink and consume each other wholly. Through these many signs God, my lover, showed to me early in life, He made me gain much confidence in Him, and I often thought that no one loved Him as dearly as I. But meanwhile reason made me see that my love for Him was not the dearest, though the strong bonds of our loving had prevented me from sensing or even believing this. Such then is my present state. I do no longer believe that my love for Him is the dearest, nor do I believe that there is one alive who loves God as dearly as I. Sometimes I am so enlightened with love that I realize my failure to give my beloved what He deserves; sometimes when I am blinded with love’s sweetness, when I am tasting and feeling her, I realize she is enough for me; and sometimes when I am feeling so fulfilled in her presence, I secretly admit to her that she is enough for me.

Stanzaic Poem 8

Born is the new season as the old one that lasted so long is drawing to a close.

Those prepared to do love’s service will receive her rewards: new comfort and new strength.

If they love her with the vigor of love, they will soon be one with love in love.

To be one with love is an awesome calling and those who long for it should spare no effort.

Beyond all reason they will give their all and go through all.

For love dwells so deep in the womb of the Father that her power will unfold only to those who serve her with utter devotion.

First the lover must learn charity and keep God’s law.

Then he shall be blessed a hundredfold, and he shall do great things without great effort, and bear all pain without suffering.

And so his life will surpass human reason indeed.

Those who long to be one with love achieve great things, and shirk no effort.

They shall be strong and capable of any task that will win them the love of love, to help the sick or the healthy, the blind, the crippled or the wounded.

For this is what the lover owes to love.

He shall help the strangers and give to the poor and soothe the suffering whenever he can.

He shall pay loyal service to God’s friends, to saints and men, with a strength that is not human, by night and by day.

And when his strength seems to falter he will still place his trust in love.

Those who trust in love with all their being shall be given all they need.

For she brings comfort to the sad and guidance to those who cannot read.

Love will be pleased with the lover if he accepts no other comfort and trusts in her alone.

Those who desire to live in love alone with all their might and heart shall so dispose all things that they shall soon possess her all.

Stanzaic Poem 12

Like the noble season born to bring us flowers in the fields, so the noble ones are called to bear the yoke, the bonds of love.

Faith grows forever in their deeds, and noble flowers blossom and their fruits.

The world is fathomed with faith, and the lover dwells in highest love, one with her in everlasting friendship.

“My yoke is sweet, my burden light,” love’s lover speaks with words conceived in love.

And outside love their truth cannot be known: to those who do not dwell in love the burden is not light but heavy, and they suffer fears unknown to love.

For the servants’ law is fear but love is the law of sons.

What is this burden light in love, this yoke so sweet?

It is that noble thrust inside, that touch of love in the beloved which makes him one with her, one will, one being, one beyond revoke.

And ever deeper digs desire and all that is dug up is drunk by love, for love’s demands on love surpass the mind of man.

These things are beyond the mind of man: how the lover whom love has overwhelmed with love beholds the beloved so full of love.

For he rests not an hour, before he sails with love through all that is, and looks upon her splendor with devotion.

For in love’s face he reads the designs she has for him, and in truth in love’s face he sees clear and undeceived so many pains so sweet.

This he clearly sees: the lover must love in truth alone.

And when in truth he sees how little he does for love, his higher nature burns with rage and pain.

But from love’s face, the lover learns to live a life devoted to the love of love.

This is a design that makes pain sweet, and the lover gives his all to love’s fulfillment.

Things of great wonder come to those who give their all to love.

They will be glued to love with love, and with love they will fathom love.

All their secret veins will run into that stream where love gives love away, where love’s friends are made drunk with love and filled with wonder at her passion.

And all this remains concealed to strangers, but to the wise it stands revealed.

God grant that all who crave love be well prepared for love, that they may live of her wealth alone, and draw her into their love.

No cruel stranger will ever cause them grief; their life is free and undisturbed, and well may they say, “I am all of love and love is all of me.”

For what will harm them when they claim the sun, the moon, and all the stars?

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