Hadewijch of Antwerp: "Love Is Everything"

Hadewijch of Antwerp (posted on the date of Suzanne Lilar's death, 12 December 1992) 

I suppose that you could regard today's post on the thirteenth-century mystic Hadewijch of Antwerp as something of a double post.

There are simply too few details about Hadewijch's life to find a relevant date for writing about her, at least one related to her own history. We know virtually nothing about her, except for what can be teased out of her writing--frequently biographical details for medieval women writers are embedded in their work, but in the surviving texts, Hadewijch reveals little about her life. Or, at least, her physical life.

From a fourteenth-century manuscript

collection of Hadewijch's work

(Ghent University Library, MS 941),

the poem begins,

"Ay, al es nu die winter cout, /

cort die daghe ende die nachte langhe"

("Ah, though now the winter is cold,

the days short and the night long...")

I am writing about Hadewijch of Antwerp today, and choosing to do so on the date of the Belgian francophone writer Suzanne Lilar. Born Suzanne Verbist in 1901, she enrolled at the University of Ghent in 1919, where she studied philosophy and, in 1925, where she received a law degree. While at the university, she discovered the work of Hadewijch and found in the thirteenth-century mystic an inspiration for her own essays, plays, and poetry. 

In her 1963 Le Couple (translated as Aspects of Love in Western Society), in particular, she refers to Hadewijch's use of minne, or all-embracing love, and her mystical nuptial imagery, in her descriptions of an all-embracing, ideal of love, one that sees human love as a revelation of divine love.

As for Hadewijch. Bernard McGinn, the historian of western mysticism, named her as one of the "Four Female Evangelists" of thirteenth-century mysticism, along with Angela of Foligno, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete:

I use the term "evangelist" in a perhaps provocative way, not only to underline the stature of these four women (Angela, Hadewijch, Mechthild, and Marguerite Porete) as the most important female mystics of the thirteenth century, but also to emphasize the bold, quasi scriptural claims they made for their writings.

About Hadewijch, McGinn writes, she "remains a mystery, as much for the paradoxes and perplexity of her writings as for her life." 

Given her references in her work--she refers to the Latin and French works of St. Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and other Christian authorities, for example--we can conclude that she was "obviously learned." She must also have come from a noble family, not only because of the education she must have received, but also because of her familiarity with courtly love poetry. Like many of the women mystics of the thirteenth century, she used the language of courtly love in her visionary work, such mystic language variously identified as "courtly mysticism," Minnemystik, or la mystique courtoise, depending on your linguistic preference. Using elements that have their origins in troubadour poetry, female mystics expressed their yearning for the divine beloved in ecstatic and erotic terms. 

Like Mechthild and Marguerite Porete, Hadewijch was a beguine.* From details in her surviving letters, she seems to have been the head of a beguine house for some time, but she also seems to have been forced out of this life and into a wandering existence at some point. (This last detail comes from one of her letters, number 29, but McGinn also considers the possibility that this reference to a "wandering life" may be a kind of literary formula.)

Although Hadewijch's work survives only in a handful of fourteenth-century manuscripts, her "literary mastery surpasses that of any other medieval woman mystic, not least because of the variety of genres in which she expressed her message" (I am quoting McGinn here). 

Hadewijch's surviving work includes Strophische Gedichten (Poems in Stanzas), forty-five lyrics modeled on troubadour poetry, but adapting the language of secular love poetry "into the field of mystical discourse." The Mengeldichten (Poems in Couplets) are sixteen poems in rhyming couplets expressing elements of her faith.

Hadewijch's Visioenenboek (Book of Visions) is the "earliest vernacular collection" of this kind of visionary revelations, probably dating to the 1240s. Finally, there are thirty prose letters. What little biographical evidence that survives can be gleaned from these letters, but they also expand on and develop "all-embracing theme," love: "Minne is everything" (from letter 25, "Minne es al"). 

Despite Suzanne Lilar's interest in Hadewijch, her work has really only become well-known in the late twentieth-century. The first English translation appeared in 1980, when Mother Columba Hart published Hadewijch: The Complete Works for the Classics of Western Spirituality series. The first influential study of her Hadewijch and her work to appear was Paul Mommaers 1989 Hadewijch: Writer – Beguine – Love Mystic, which won the Flemish Prijs De Standaard (Mommaers's work was translated into English in 2004).

For the most complete discussion of Hadewijch, especially her complicated views of minne, I recommend Bernard McGinn's The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism--1200-1350, volume 3 of his history of western Christian mysticism.

*As we have seen, the beguines were a lay religious movement--beguines like Marie of Oignies and Mechthild of Magdeburg were not associated with any religious order, nor did they live in any officially sanctioned community. They lived an ascetic, spiritual life, devoting themselves to poverty and chastity, working among the poor and ill and modeling their lives on the life of Jesus.

Angela of Foligno, "Female Evangelist"

Angela of Foligno ("equivalent canonization," 9 October 2013)

Of Angela of Foligno, theologian and emeritus professor Bernard McGinn writes, 

I like to describe Angela as one of the four "female evangelists" of thirteenth-century mysticism. I use the term "evangelist" in a perhaps provocative way, not only to underline the stature of these four women (Angela, Hadewijch, Mechthild, and Marguerite Porete) as the most important female mystics of the thirteenth century, but also to emphasize the bold, quasi scriptural claims they made for their writings.*

Some doubts have been raised about whether such a historical person as "Angela of Foligno" ever existed. For his part, McGinn notes that there is a middle ground between taking later accounts of her life at face value and dismissing her biography as a "mystic tale." 

An eighteenth-century print of the
thirteenth-century mystic

We will follow McGinn, then, in saying that Angela of Foligno was probably born about the year 1248, in the Umbrian province of Perugia, to a fairly affluent family. She was married and had a number of children.

At the age of forty, Angela had a dream that would change her life. Francis of Assisi appeared to her in a vision, with the result that she came to regard her previous life as sinful and determined to live a life of purity and the pursuit of perfection. (According to legend, Angela was wealthy, beautiful, and vain--definitely sinful.)

As a married mother, pursuing a life of spiritual purity might not have been easy. Like Margery Kempe, Angela of Foligno found her road to the religious life blocked by her very human family. (There is no evidence that Kempe would have encountered the ideas of Angela of Foligno in England, as she did for Birgitta of Sweden, but on her pilgrimages she did visit sites associated with the Italian visionary and might have learned about her. Certainly there are remarkable parallels in their experiences and behavior.)

But by 1388 Angela's "problem" was solved--her mother died, and then, a few months later, her husband and children died. Angela was able to begin her religious life by giving away her possessions.

With one female servant, a woman named Masazuola, she became, by 1291, a tertiary of St. Francis--that is, she became a member of a "third order" of the Franciscans, someone who, for a variety of reasons, may not take formal vows to join a religious order but who, as a lay person, lives outside the convent according to the ways of life of those who live inside. (For a discussion of tertiary orders, click here.) 

In 1292, under the direction of a spiritual adviser whom McGinn refers to as "Brother A." (other sources identify him as Father Arnoldo of Foligno), Angela began to dictate the story of her conversion and a "narrative of her inner journey," twenty stages on "her itinerary to God." A further set of ten stages, which Brother A. found difficult to understand and condensed into seven "supplementary stages," were incorporated into her memoriale, completed in 1296.

Angela's remains are in the
Church of St. Francis in Foligno

In 1298, according to McGinn, the book was submitted for approval, which it received. Brother A. then revised the Memorial (1299-1300), adding a series of thirty-six instructiones, which "reflect Angela's teaching between 1296 and her death in early 1309." 

The whole is known today, depending on the edition or translation, as Il libro della Beata Angela da Foligno, The Spiritual Journey of the Blessed Angela of Foligno according to the Memorial of Brother A, or Angela of Foligno: Complete Works.

Angela of Foligno was beatified by Pope Clement XI on 11 July 1701. In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI spoke on Angela at a general audience. Angela of Foligno was given an "equipolente canonization" by Pope Francis on 9 October 2013 (here's an explanation of what that means). 

For an extended discussion of Angela of Foligno's Book, see McGinn's The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism--1200-1350, vol. 3 of his History of Western Christian Mysticism.

This dome, which includes a representation of

Angela of Foligno, is in the Basilica Cattedrale di San Feliciano

in Foligno, where Brother A. met her and transcribed her 

book of memories and instruction.

*I've also posted on Hadewijch of Antwerp, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete—click to read those posts.  

Blessed Margareta Ebner, Nun and Visionary

Margareta Ebner (died 20 June 1351)

Born in southeastern Germany (Swabia) in 1291, Margareta Ebner was a member of an aristocratic family and well-educated. Without any of the opposition or controversy that many young women experienced before entering into a religious life, Ebner joined the Dominican nuns at the convent of Maria Medingen, near the Bavarian town of Dillingen, probably around the year 1305. She spent the rest of her life there. 

The tomb of Margareta Ebner,
convent of Maria Medingen

From 1312, she suffered a series of traumatic, debilitating illnesses--at times she experienced bouts of uncontrollable laughter and tears that lasted for days at a time, while at other times she was bedridden, occasionally for months at a time. 

However, as Bernard McGinn notes, her illnesses became "the occasion, even the stimulus, for her conversion to a deeper mystical life of devotion."

In 1315, her "mystical life" began; she would later record these experiences in her Revelations, "a kind of mystical journal, or autohagiographical narrative." She was encouraged by the priest Henry of Nördlingen, a spiritual adviser with whom she exchanged letters (fifty-six of his letters to her survive; unfortunately, only one of hers, to him, survives). 

Ebner began the process of composing her Revelations in 1344 and completed her task in 1348. She died on 20 June 1351. 

Interestingly, Nördlingen not only provided the impetus for Ebner's recording of her visionary experiences, he also translated the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg's The Flowing Light of the Godhead into Middle High German and sent a copy to Ebner. (The original seems to have been written in Mechthild's Middle Low German; it had then been translated into Latin.) 

Henry of Nördlingen also correspond with, visited, and inspired the Dominican nun, mystic, and writer Christina Ebner (1277-1356)--to whom he also gave a copy of Mechthild's The Flowing Light of the Godhead. With his encouragement, Christina Ebner began a correspondence with Margareta Ebner--despite sharing a name, their religious order, and their mystical experiences, the two are not related.

Margareta Ebner was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 24 February 1979.

For an account of Ebner's visionary experiences, I recommend Bernard McGinn's The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism--1200-1350, the third volume of his monumental history of western Christian mysticism. Her Revelations is also available in a Classics of Western Spirituality edition, Margaret Ebner: Major Works.

Marguerite Porete: Mystic, Writer, Martyr

Marguerite Porete (executed 1 June 1310)

About Marguerite Porete, theologian and historian Bernard McGinn writes, "No medieval woman mystic challenged her contemporaries--and still challenges us--more than the northern French beguine Marguerite Porete," whose "bold and uncompromising spirituality led to her execution as a heretic on June 1, 1310."

From a late-fifteenth or early-sixteenth manuscript copy
of The Mirror for Simple Souls
(Chantilly, Bibliothèque et archives du château, MS 5588)

We know about the end of Porete's life because records of the heresy trial that condemned her to death survive, but about her origins there is much less that is certain. Even her name depends on the testimony of those who condemned her--as her sentence was read out by one of her Dominican inquisitors before she was released to the secular authorities to carry out her execution, he named her as Marguerite, "called Porete." She was also said to have been born in Hainaut, in northern France, but none of the surviving evidence gave any indication about her date of birth or her family connections.

Marguerite Porete had been imprisoned in Paris for a year and a half. She had refused to speak to her inquisitors, she had refused to recant her beliefs, and she had refused to acknowledge a previous order, issued in 1306, that had required her to withdraw her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls. 

Like two women we have already met in our posts for this year, Marie of Oignies and Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite seems to have been a part of the beguine movement--some beguines lived solitary lives, while others joined together into loosely organized religious communities of women who lived lives of poverty, chastity, and service, but who were not members of formally recognized religious orders. Marguerite refers to herself at one point as "formerly a mendicant creature," so she may have lived outside of any beguine community.

Another image from the 
Chantilly copy MS

Exactly why Porete's work brought her to the attention of the authorities isn't at all clear--after the 1306 order that her book be burned, she had sent her book to three noted theologians who had verified the orthodoxy of her views in The Mirror of Simple Souls. 

As she asserts in the prologue to her work, "It has already been read and approved by three men of learning and holiness": a Franciscan friar, a Cistercian monk, and a theologian from the University of Paris. She names them, quotes from their judgments of her work, and adds, "I obtained these approbations for you, readers, for your peace of mind."

But these endorsements were clearly not enough. The way of life practiced by the beguines--their asceticism, their refusal to marry, their independence, their traveling, their insistence on preaching and teaching--had always generated suspicion.

Most significantly, whether they chose an itinerant, solitary life or a life among other like-minded women in communities, they had avoided all of the male hierarchical strictures of medieval society. In 1215 and again in 1274, church councils had banned new religious orders for women, and by 1311, the Council of Varenne specifically condemned the beguines and other heresies, its bull Ad nostrum including articles drawn directly from Porete's work.

In her brief essay on Porete, written for The Guardian, theologian Tina Beattie observes that "It is not easy to establish exactly why Porete was condemned as a heretic":

The Mirror of Simple Souls, written in a vivid literary style in Old French, is a dialogue among the allegorical figures of Love, Reason and the Soul. The main challenge it poses to Catholic orthodoxy is in its claim that there is a state of mystical union in which the will completely loses itself in God so that it becomes undifferentiated and one with the divine. . . .

The fact that The Mirror of Simple Souls was written in the vernacular rather than Latin and had a popular following may have created suspicion among religious authorities. When in the 12th century theological education shifted to the universities from monasteries and abbeys (including some which had been presided over by powerful abbesses), Latin became the language of a male theological elite, but female mystics and vernacular theologians such as Porete claimed direct authority from God for their religious experiences and insights. It is easy to see how such claims threatened those who sought to maintain control of church teaching and doctrine by circumscribing the conditions under which a theologian could speak or write authoritatively.

When Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake, her book was burned with her. But, as McGinn notes, The Mirror of Simple Souls survived the conflagration--"no fewer than six versions in four languages with thirteen manuscripts" preserved Porete's words, "making it among the more widely disseminated of the vernacular mystical texts of the Middle Ages."

La Place de Grève, site of Marguerite Porete's execution,
from a map of 1572

While the text survived, Porete's authorship did not--her identity as author was suppressed, and the work circulated anonymously. In fact, Porete's authorship of The Mirror of Simple Souls was only reestablished in 1946 by Romana Guarnieri, a scholar of medieval spirituality (and, I might point out, a woman). Before Guarnieri's identification of the text's author as Marguerite Porete, scholars had assumed the author to be male--and one translator even identified the author as a theologian from the University of Paris!

In ending her essay on Marguerite Porete, Beattie recalls the words of Mechthild of Magdeburg: "No one can burn the truth." Here's the quotation, from The Flowing Light of the Godhead--it sounds remarkably prescient:

I was warned about this book, and people told me that if it were not protected, it could be thrown on the fire. Then I did as I have done since I was a child: whenever I was distressed, then I had to pray. . . . Then God himself at once to my sorrowful soul and held this book in his right hand and said: My love, do not be too distressed, no one may burn the truth.

For a great introduction to Marguerite Porete and her work, you can access Tina Beattie's essay by clicking here. There are several editions of The Mirror for Simple Souls, but I recommend the excellent edition by Ellen Babinsky, a volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality series.

Excellent analysis of The Mirror of Simple Souls is in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism--1200-1350, volume 2 of McGinn's monumental history of western mysticism. For an in-depth volume on Porete, her text, her trial, and condemnation, see Sean L. Field's The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart.

Mechthild of Magdeburg and the "Flowing Light of the Godhead"

Mechthild of Magdeburg (Asteroid 873 Mechthild discovered 21 May 1917)

Because we do not know exactly when the Beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg was born or when she died, I have chosen today to post about her--on this day in 1917, the German astronomer Max Wolf discovered an asteroid now known as 873 Mechthild, named after this thirteenth-century woman.

Mechthild of Magdeburg,

Peter-Paul Metz, choirstall, 1896

Church of St. Gordian and Epimachus,

Leutkirch im Allgäu, Germany

What we know about Mechthild's life comes from the work for which she is principally known, The Flowing Light of the Godhead. The biographical details are few--she seems to have been born between 1207 and 1210, the child of a noble family, since she refers to court life and customs.

She writes that she has a brother, Baldwin, who joins the Dominican order and who receives an excellent scholastic education, though Mechthild refers to herself as a "simple spiritual creature" (her work is notable in that, unlike most of the spiritual writing of her contemporaries, it seems to have been written in the vernacular rather than Latin).

Mechthild also tells us that she began her remarkable visionary life at the age of twelve--and that, for the next thirty-one years, "the loving greeting" from the Holy Spirit came to her "every day."

In her work she reveals that when she was a young woman (perhaps about 1230) and "through God's word," she went to Magdeburg to live a life of "renunciation of the world." There she joined a Beguine community and seems also to have grown into a position of leadership within this community.

As I have written in an earlier post, the Beguines were a lay religious movement--Beguines were not associated with any religious order, nor did they live in any officially sanctioned community. They lived an ascetic, spiritual life, devoting themselves to poverty and chastity, working among the poor and ill and modeling their lives on the life of Jesus. To be a Beguine was to live a potentially dangerous life--in a few days I will post on Marguerite Porete, a French Beguine who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1310.

Mechthild writes that she "painfully conquered the body for twenty years"--always tired, weak, and ill, she devoted herself to "sighing, weeping, confession, fasting, watching," following in her life the "glorious suffering" of Jesus. It is at this point, after twenty years of rigorous self-discipline, that her confessor tells Mechthild what God expects of her:

Then he [her confessor] commanded me to do that about which I often weep for shame when I look at my unworthiness: write this book out of God's heart and mouth. This book has thus come lovingly from God and not from the human senses.

For the next fifteen (or so) years, Mechthild records her visions, conversations with God, and revelations. At some point, probably about 1270, she puts aside her "homeless life" and joins the monastery at Helfta, joining the remarkable Gertrude of Hackeborn, her sister Mechthilde of Hackeborn, and a woman we have met before, Gertrude the Great.

Helfta, where Mechthilde of Magdeburg lived at
the end of her life

The reasons for Mechthild's move are not clear--but she was old, she had become blind, and, perhaps more critically, increasing restrictions were being placed on Beguines in Germany and the Low Countries, and Mechthild's own religious claims and her criticisms of the institutional church had made her vulnerable. The date of her death is not certain--there are a wide ranges of dates suggested, from 1282 to 1297.

One of the best accounts of Mechthild as a visionary is Bernard McGinn's, in vol. 3 of his history of western Christian mysticism, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200-1350. There is a very affordable edition of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, but you can find a good, manageable chunk in Henry Carrigan's Meditations from Mechthild of Magdeburg.

Gertrude the Great: A Woman Finding Her Place

Gertrude the Great (born 6 January 1256)

Denied any "official" role in the Christian church, either as priests, as administrators, or as trained theologians, women nevertheless found a number of ways to participate in the religious life--not only in expected ways, through worship and participation in church festivals and celebrations or as cloistered nuns, but also in unexpected ways, as the life and work of Gertrude of Helfta, ultimately awarded the honorific "the Great," clearly demonstrates.

For many women, the monasteries of the Middle Ages seem to have served as  "cities of ladies," offering them strong female models and bonds, as is the case with Gertrude at the monastery of St. Mary of Helfta.*

When Gertrude entered St. Mary's at the age of four, it was under the direction of Gertrude of Hackeborn, who had made the convent into a center for learning. Gertrude of Hackeborn's sister, Mechthilde, ran the institution's school, trained and directed the choir, and experienced a series of mystical revelations, preserved in The Book of Special Grace. Late in her life, the mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg joined the monastery and this remarkable group of women where she also came to influence the younger Gertrude.

An anonymous painting of
Gertrude the Great,
illustratng her devotion to
the Sacred Heart

During her relatively brief life (she died around the year 1302, at age forty-five or forty-six), Gertrude the Great produced a number of works, all in Latin, including The Herald of Divine Love, her Teachings of Spiritual Exercises, and a compilation of meditations and prayers, the Gertrudian Prayers.

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a Vatican address "On St. Gertrude" which makes special note of the significance of all-female communities like that of Helfta:

St. Gertrude the Great, about whom I would like to speak today, takes us also this week to the monastery of Helfta, where some of the masterpieces of feminine Latin-Germanic religious literature were created. Gertrude belonged to this world; she was one of the most famous mystics, the only woman of Germanic descent to be called "the Great" because of her cultural and evangelical stature. With her life and thought she influenced Christian spirituality in a singular way. She was an exceptional woman, gifted with particular natural talents and extraordinary gifts of grace, of most profound humility and ardent zeal for the salvation of her neighbor, of profound communion with God in contemplation and readiness to help the needy.

In Helfta she is systematically compared, so to speak, with her teacher Matilda of Hackeborn . . . ; she was associated with Matilda of Magdeburg, another Medieval mystic; she grew up under the maternal, gentle and exacting care of Abbess Gertrude. From these three sisters of hers she acquired treasures of experience and wisdom; she developed them in her own synthesis, following her religious itinerary with unlimited trust in the Lord. She expresses the richness of spirituality not only in her monastic world, but also and above all in the biblical, liturgical, patristic and Benedictine world, with a most personal stamp and with great communicative effectiveness.

There are many excellent studies of medieval women mystics. On Gertrude the Great and the monastery of Helfta, I particularly recommend Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff's Medieval Women's Visionary Literature, which also contains selections from the visionary texts. And for an unparalleled discussion of Gertrude and her visions in context, see Bernard McGinn's The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism: 1200-1350, volume 3 of his multi-volume The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism.

Gertrude the Great was canonized in 1667. Her feast day is 16 November.

*There is some confusion about whether the monastery at St. Mary's belonged to the Benedictine or Cistercian order. The matter is clarified by McGinn: while the institution was intended--and founded--as a convent of Cistercian nuns in 1229, a Cistercian General Chapter had decided, in 1228, to forbid "further foundation or incorporation of houses for women into the order." Thus, as McGinn explains,  the institution "remained technically a Benedictine convent, though one that used the gray habit of Cistercian nuns and followed their usages" (3:267).