Dear Church, the Beloved of Christ, Let us pray:
Triune God of Love, overwhelming and all-encompassing: Visit us in our solitude and in our companionship, and draw us ever more deeply into union with you, who are ever present and ever mysterious, that we like your servant Hadewijch might know you ever more fully, even as we have been fully known. Amen.
Hadewijch of Brabant, is also known as Hadewych of Antwerp. Although the name Hadewych of Antwerp is used frequently. It appears that she was not from Antwerp but appears to have come from the Duchy of Brabant which is in Belgium. We know little of her life – only the information that can be gleaned from her letters and writings. We are not sure of the year of her birth or her death. Most scholars give the approximate dates: 1220 – 1260. She was the head of a beguine house (lay religious order) prior to beginning a life as a traveller and mystic.
It appears from her writing that she was of the upper class and had read some of the major philosophers and theologians, e.g. St. Augustine of Hippo, Saint Bernard, William of Saint Thierry, Hugh of St. Victor, and Richard of St. Victor. Her writings influenced medieval mystiques John of Ruysbroeck and Meister Eckhardt.
Hadewijch of Brabant is considered to be an important figure in Dutch literature of the thirteenth century because her poems that are in the troubadour tradition of courtly love are one of the few such extant texts in Middle Dutch. And her prose work is one of only two very early prose texts in the vernacular. Most Dutch text books that deal with the history of Dutch literature include her work.
Hadewijch refers to a masculine lover throughout her letters and poems, but the masculine gender changes to the feminine when she describes the power of God. In one passage she writes:
Love, you were God’s counsel when He made me man, but now you let me perish in misery and I blame you for all that comes over me. I once believed that I was loved by love, but now it seems that she has rejected me.
Hadewijch writes that she is “man” but that the God she is writing of is also a He. Through her writings, she maintains that the love that exists within and from God is a She. Hadewijch writes that the divine “He” is not the experience that she desires because she instead wants to be entwined with the “she” (the love). Hadewijch’s mysticism becomes an experiential devotion that does not directly desire God, but the experience of Love that exists within all, and is thus Godly in its own conception because of her gendered distinctions. Through the use of gendered pronouns, Hadewijch also gives judgment-centered agency to both Love and God for they both have the ability to reject the believer due to their own conditions. As a result, Hadewijch’s mysticism gives agency, dualism, and gender transferal, to her God. (Kate Lindemann, Society for the Study of Women Philosophers)
The medieval mystics hold a special place in the history and theology of the Church. Their writings often focussed on the presence of the Christ in the sacraments, the Bible, and the personal experience of God in our lives. Hadewijch, as well as Julian of Norwich, Margery a Kempe, and Meister Eckhart amongst others, sought the deep understanding of the mystical presence of God in their lives, and that experience ‘was the stepping stone to greater spirituality and knowledge.’
Blessings upon Blessings,
Father Eric