Greco-Christian stream·Beguine Mystics·The Brieven (Letters) of Hadewijch·Section X — The Closing Section

Section X — The Closing Section

The complete Brieven corpus is shipped with this section. Letters XXVIII-XXXI close the thirty-one prose-Letters of Hadewijch, including some of the most-cited single passages in the entire corpus:

• Letter XXVIII — In the richness of the clarity of the Holy Spirit. One of the longest single Letters. Composed as a series of speeches by a blessed soul in God: each begins Dit seide ene ziele in... (Thus said a soul in [the friendship / freedom / richness / presence] of God). The seven attributes of God (eternity, greatness, wisdom, nobility, presence, flowingness, wholeness) corresponding to the seven divine workings; the cascade Si ghevoelt → toeverlaet → soetecheit → blijscap → claerheit → siet ende ne siet niet. Contains the famous I-saw-God-God-and-human-human passage: I saw God God and the human human — and then I did not wonder, that God was God and the human was human. Then I saw God human, and I saw the human god. Then I did not wonder that the human was verweent (most-blessed) with God. The structural-doctrinal climax of the Brieven.
• Letter XXIX — the personal be-not-saddened-on-my-account Letter. Ay soete kint, uwe bedroeven es mi leet (Ay sweet child, your saddening grieves me). Hadewijch's clearest reference to her own exile or imprisonment: Hoe soet met mi gaet, eest in doelne achter lande, eest in ghevancnesse — hoet sijn sal, het es der minnen werc (However it goes with me, whether wandering through the lands or in prison — however it shall be, it is Love's work). The most direct biographical witness to Hadewijch's persecution.
• Letter XXX — the great closing doctrinal Letter on the Trinity-life. God as foundation of right Love. The qui amat non laborat doctrine returns. The Father-admonishing-Son-and-Spirit, Spirit-and-Son-admonishing-Father in the singleness of fruition doctrine; the three lives corresponding to the three Persons (Son-life through enlightened Reason, Holy-Spirit-life through desire and work in all things, Father-life through being in the bond of single Love). The famous lightning-then-thunder image (Love shows herself in lightning + speaks in thunder); the seven-failures catalogue (we have too much self-will, we seek too much rest, we seek too much consolation, etc.).
• Letter XXXI — the closing Letter of the entire Brieven corpus. Ay dear child, the best life is this: to stand after God, to do him enough with Love and to trust him above all. For with trust one comes most-closely to him (optima vita). Carries the voice of God himself speaking to the soul: Your death and mine shall be one. Therefore we shall live with one life, and one Love shall fill both our hungers. Hadewijch's own voice then resumes, references a dream-vision of the addressee (omme dat mi hier voermaels van u droemde, dat ghi mine tekene sout leren — "because once I dreamed of you here before, that you should learn my signs") — one of the few self-reflexive metatextual moments in the corpus — and closes with admonition to Haste you to virtue in righteous Love, ending AMEN.

Same conventions as Sections I-IX. Minne → Love; verweent → most-blessed / over-favored (the Hadewijchian superlative); enecheit → singleness, unity; toeverlaet → trust; vrientscap → friendship; ghevoelleke → of feeling / of close-experience.

The closing of the entire 31-Letter corpus is also the closing of the four-work Hadewijch project on /sources/. Visioenen, Strofische Gedichten, Mengeldichten, and now Brieven all rendered in full from the Middle Dutch.

Letter XXVIII

XXVIII. In the Richness of the Clarity of the Holy Spirit — Speeches of a Blessed Soul

In the richness of the clarity of the Holy Spirit, the blessed soul makes most-blessed feast. The feast is the holy words conjoined in holiness with the holiness of our Lord. The words are, to each soul who hears them and naturally understands, giving four things with full holiness: they give her fulness and sweetness and joy and most-blessedness — and all in truth-bearing spirituality.

When God gives the blessed soul the clarity by which she may behold him in his Godhead, she beholds him in his eternity, and in his greatness, and in his wisdom, and in his nobility, and in his presence, and in his flowingness, and in his wholeness. She sees how God is in his eternity — God with natural Godhead. She sees how God is in his greatness — mighty with natural mightiness. She sees how God is in his wisdom — most-blessed with natural most-blessedness. She sees how God is in his nobility — clear with natural clarity. She sees how God is in his presence — sweet with his natural sweetness. She sees how God is in his flowingness — rich with natural richness. She sees how God is in his wholeness — delight with natural delight-ness.⁹ In all these she beholds God in one Person; and in each of these she beholds God in many-fold divine richness.

When she is in this beholding, she needs to be in rest of heart — whatever she is otherwise from without.

This says the sweet soul who with Love in great grief has awaited her Lord with his trust, and her Lord has cleared her heart. And in the clarity she has come into wholly-shown clarity. And she speaks of feasts and says of delights: What is to me else than God? God is to me in-presence. God is to me flowingly. God is to me wholly. God is to me with the Son in-presence with sweetnesses. God is to me with the Holy Spirit flowingly with riches. God is to me with the Father wholly with most-blessednesses. Thus God is to me with three Persons one Lord, and one Lord with three Persons, and with three Persons in many-fold divine richness he is to my soul.

And she herself speaks further. The soul that wanders with God in his presence speaks gladly of his pleasantness, and of his sweetness, and of his greatness. The soul that wanders further with God in his flowingness speaks gladly of his Love and of his most-blessedness and of his nobility. The soul that wanders yet further with God in his wholeness speaks gladly of heavenly richness and of heavenly joys and of heavenly delight. The blessed soul who with all these wanders in God, and with God wanders in all these — she knows all manner of grace, and she is master and most-blessed with such most-blessedness as God is in divine richness, who is one eternal Lord, and who is all good and who is God, and who has made all things.

God is greatness, and mightiness, and wisdom. God is goodness, and presence, and sweetness. God is subtlety, and nobility, and wealth. God is highly in his greatness, and complete in his mightiness, and most-blessed in his wisdom. God is wonder in his goodness, and wholly in his presence, and joy in his sweetness. God is truth-bearing in his subtlety, and wealthy in his nobility, and all-overflowing in his wealth. Thus is God in three Persons with himself in many-fold divine richness.

God is a most-blessed blessedness, and he is upheld with surpassing strength in wondrous high richness. These are the words which with most-blessedness come falling out of the fineness of God. And what is the fineness of God? That is the being of the Godhead in singleness, and the singleness in wholeness, and the wholeness in shown-ness, and the shown-ness in glory, and the glory in fruition, and the fruition in eternity. God's graces are all fine. But he who understands this — how this is in God and in the throne of thrones, and in the riches of the heavens — he has the fineness of all manner of graces. Whoever would speak anything thereto, he needs to speak with the soul.

God is with most-blessedness being in the midst of his glory. And therein he is in himself unwritten of goodnesses and of richnesses and of wonders. God is with himself in himself written with full blessedness for blessednesses of his creatures, because he is God. Therefore is heaven and earth full of God. Were anyone so spiritual that he could recognize God — a blessed soul saw with God after God. And she saw God after God wholly and flowingly. And she saw God flowingly in wholenesses, and wholly in flowingnesses.

And she spoke with her wholeness and said: God is one great Lord in eternity, and he has in his Godhead that he is in three Persons. He is Father in his mightiness, he is Son in his recognizability, he is Holy Spirit in his glory. God gives in the Father, and he shows in the Son, and he makes-tasted in the Holy Spirit. God works with the Father mightily, with the Son recognizably, and with the Holy Spirit subtly. Thus God works with three Persons in one Lord, and with one Lord in three Persons, and with three Persons in one many-fold divine richness, and with many-fold divine richness in his most-blessed soul, whom he has led into the secrecy of his Father, and makes her all most-blessed.

Between God and the blessed soul who has become God with God, there is a spiritual caritas. When God reveals this spiritual caritas in the soul, then arises in her a felt-friendship. That is — she feels in her how God is friend to her before all grief, and in all grief, and above all grief — yes, above all grief unto the fidelity of his Father. In this felt-friendship arises a high trust. In this high trust arises a right sweetness. In this right sweetness arises a truth-bearing joy. In this truth-bearing joy arises a divine clarity. So she sees and she sees not. She sees one proper, one flowing, one whole truth, which God himself is in eternity. She stands and God gives and she receives. And what she then receives of truth-bearings and of spiritualities and of feelings and of wonder — that cannot become common to anyone. And she must remain in silence in the freedom of this most-blessedness. What God then speaks to her of high spiritual wonders — that knows no one but God, who gives it to her, and the soul, who is spiritual as God is above all spirituality.

This said one human in God: My soul is all torn open with the strength of eternity, and she is all melted with the friendship of fatherliness, and she is all flooded with the greatness of God. The greatness is without measure, and the heart of my heart is a rich richness which is God and Lord in his eternity.

This said one soul in the friendship of God: I have heard the voice of most-blessedness, and I have seen the land of clarity, and I have tasted the fruit of joy. Since this has been, all the senses of my soul have watched after high spiritual wonders, and all my present prayers are always seized with a sweet trust which God himself is in truth-bearing truth. Because this is so, therefore I tremble immeasurably verweent with such most-blessedness as God is in his Godhead.

God is flooding with holinesses above all the holy in the fatherliness of himself, and out of that he is giving to his dearest children new richness all full of glory. Because this is God, therefore he may today and tomorrow and always give new richnesses which were never heard — they were heard by the Persons of himself in his eternity. God is in his Person, and he is in his strengths. God is above without end, and he is under without end, and he is all-around without end in his strengths. God is in the midst of his Person, filling all his strengths with divine richness. Thus God is in the Person with himself in many-fold divine richness. Anything of God, that is God — and therefore God stirs in his smallest gift all his strengths. Yes, anything of God, that is God himself, is he in himself. The richnesses of God are many-fold, and God is many-fold in singleness, and he is simple in many-fold-ness. Because this is God, so are all his children verweent, and ever one verweender than the other, and all his children are verweent.

The blessed soul speaks spiritual wisdom with Love, and she speaks high with truth-bearing, and she speaks mightily with riches. God gives Love and truth-bearing and riches out of the fulness of his Godhead. God gives Love with understanding. God gives truth-bearing with contemplation. God gives riches with fruition.

This said one soul in the presence of God: One God is of all the heavens, and the heavens are opened, and the strength of the great God shines in the hearts of his secret-ones with feelings and with sweetnesses and with joys. Then is the blessed soul led into a spiritual drunkenness, in which she must be at play, and bear herself after the sweetness she feels from within. No one grasps her: she is the child of God and is verweent. Another soul my soul calls yet verweender: that is the soul which with truth-bearings and with nobilities and with clarities and with heights is led into a verweent stillness. And in that verweent stillness she hears a great noise of that wonder which God himself is in eternity. They are both the children of God and are verweent in these times.

Those who have come so far with God that they have Love and are working wisdom in divine truth — they are most often verweent with such verweentheit as God is. Why? Because, as much as he can behold with wisdom, so much he loves with Love; and as much as he can love with Love, so much he beholds with wisdom — and is most often working with wisdom and with Love in the richness of God. And that is a high verweentheit. He who has so long stood with God that he understands such wonders, as God is in his Godhead — he seems most often, before the godly people who do not know this, un-godly out of Godhood, and un-steady out of steadiness, and un-skillful out of skillfulness.

I saw God God and the human human. And then I did not wonder that God was God, and that the human was human. Then I saw God human, and I saw the human god-like.⁶ Then I did not wonder that the human was verweent* with God.¹ I saw how God, with grief, gave sense to the most-noble human, and with grief took the sense. And where he took the sense, he gave him the most-sharp sense in sense.* When I saw this, I comforted myself with God in all grief.

This said one soul in the richness of God: Divine wisdom and complete humility — that is great verweentheit in the clarity of the Father, and that is great completeness in the truth of the Son, and that is great play in the sweetness of the Holy Spirit.

Since the holiness of God made me keep silent, since then I have heard much. And since I have heard much, where then would I hold it? I did not hold foolishly what I held. I held all things before and after. So I keep silent then and rest with God until the time that God bids me speak. I have made-whole all my discernment, and I have made-proper all my wholeness, and I have held all my properness done in God — until the time that someone comes with such discernment, who asks me what it is that I mean. And that I feel this with God in God: that I am no more discerned, as I am to speak, and therefore I keep silent softly.

This said one soul in the freedom of God: I understood all discernment in one wholeness, and then I remained playing in the hall of the Lord, and then I left to his officers their kingdom to administer. Ay in that time flowed all the landscapes of the lands in the land. That I called the time of verweentheit. Therein I remained standing over-all and in-all-midst. Then I saw over-all in the glory without end.

Letter XXIX

XXIX. Be Not Saddened on My Account

God be with you and give you comfort with the truth-bearing comfort of himself, with which he is to himself enough. And all creatures after their wesen and after their fittingness. Ay sweet child, your sadness grieves me, and your heaviness and your sorrow. Therefore I beg you over-sore and admonish and counsel and command — as mother to her dear child whom she loves with the highest honor and the sweetest worthiness of Love — that you put all strange sorrow from you, and that you sorrow on my account as little as you may.

However it goes with me — whether wandering through the lands, or in prison — however it shall be, it is Love's work (hoe soet met mi gaet, eest in doelne achter lande, eest in ghevancnesse, hoet sijn sal, het es der minnen werc).²

I know also well that I am no strange sorrow to you, and that I am close to you of heart and known — and the dearest human living, after Sara.^2a

Therefore I know well that you cannot well leave it that you sadden yourself on my mis-fortune. But, dear child, know well that this is strange sorrow; for mark it yourself: since you believe with all your heart that I am beloved of God, and that he works his works in me, silent and open, and renews his old wonders in me — so may you also know well that they are Love's works, and that the strange wonders must come from me and be a wonder. For [the strangers] cannot work there where Love goes, for they know not her coming nor her going.

And I have lived too little with people in their customs — not in their eating, nor in their drinking, nor in their sleeping; nor have I adorned myself with their clothes, nor with their dyes, nor with their make-up;^2b nor did any joy ever come to me from all those things in which the human heart can take joy, or which it can acquire or receive — except in short hours of feeling of Love, which conquers all. But as soon as the up-stroke of my enlightened reason awakened, which ever since God shone into it has enlightened me in all that I lacked of perfection, and the others also — so it showed me, and led me to the place where I should pass through in fruition into my Beloved after his worthiness. The place of Love which my enlightened reason showed me was so far above human senses, that I had to know there that no joy nor sorrow whatever belonged to me, great or small — only that I was human, and that I felt Love with a loving heart, and that God is so great and I so un-fruitionably with the human-nature can come at the Godhead.

The un-fruitionable longing which Love has at all hours given me toward fruition of her, has wounded me and stricken me in the breast and in the heart — in armariolo and in antisma. Armariolo — that is the innermost of the veins of the heart, with which one loves. And antisma — that is the innermost of the spirit, with which one lives and is so close-of-feeling in the greatest earnestness.^2c Yet I have lived with people in all service of works. And to this they have found me ready-set at their need with ready virtue, which is plain to all wrong.^2d And I have in all things been with them.

Since God first touched me with the wholeness of Love, I felt each human's need, after what he was. With his caritas I felt, and gave to each his onst (favor) after his need. With his wisdom I felt his graciousness, and why one must so much forgive the human, and their falling and their rising-again, and the giving of God and the taking-back, and the striking and the healing, and his yielding to them for nothing. With his height I felt all the misdeed I heard named or saw here. And thereon I ever-since gave with God all righteous dooms after the ground of his truth upon all of us, whatever we were. With his singleness of Love I felt ever-since the lost-ness of fruition in Love, and the passions of the lacking of that fruition, and the ways of righteous Love in all, and her customs in God and in all people.

In Love I have all these wesens; and the human I have done enough — those who are to me too little by so much. Although I have all this in Love with eternal wesen, I yet do not have it in fruition of Love in my own wesen. And I am the human who with Christ unto death must suffer in love. For with righteous Love one shall suffer shame among all strangers — until Love comes to herself, and until she grown-through with us in virtues, where Love becomes one with the people.^2e

Letter XXX

XXX. God the Foundation; the Trinity-life; Lightning and Thunder

God who ever was and shall evermore be the foundation of right Love and of complete fidelity — he is our complete fidelity to the most-complete Love, with which he himself loves himself in himself, and all his friends whom he loves, to be loved with most-complete completeness. To this completeness should be those whom he has called and chosen and marked for his service. These might do great works, and greatly forward — were they truly to appear and to be, after the right debt of complete fidelity and of right Love.

Who loves, he works great works, and he spares not, nor does he grow weary of any need that comes to him, nor of what torment may be revealed to him. But in it he becomes always new and fresh — and also with all things, small and great, light and heavy, by which he can attain virtue, which is well-fitting to Love. Ay alas, after the fitting of high Love few people will live, but rather after their own contentment. And they want to have much of Love, and little to live her worthily.³

For we are weak in suffering and diligent in enjoyments. Small things can hinder us in trouble, so that we leave Love held-back and forget to exercise her. That is great smallness. For at all hours one should be enough to Love: in sweetness of Love to be lost, or in great tormentful smarts to be for her worthiness, and to be enough to her. The highest life and the most-strongly-growing is the spoiling and the grieving in smarts of Love. And in sweet feelings is greater lowness. For in those one is easily conquered, and so falls short the strength of Love and of longing. And what they feel — that is to them so great, that they cannot recognize the greatness of Love and her complete wesen. For when the heart and the lower sense, which are easily filled, are touched after our affection, then they are as heavens with the heavens, they think.

And in this contentment they forget the great debt which is at all hours in the admonishing — which Love of Love admonishes. The admonishing I mean — which the Father admonishes in eternal fruition of singleness to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, and the debt which the Son and the Holy Spirit admonish the Father in fruition of the holy Three-ness. And the admonishing is eternally always-new in one having and in one wesen. To demand that admonishing from the fatherly singleness — so comes the righteousness of all vengeance. By the admonishing of wisdom of the Son and of goodness of the Holy Spirit, that they admonish the fatherly mightiness in the Three-ness, so the human is made. And by the admonishing of the singleness — that the human was not enough to her — so he fell. By the admonishing of the Three-ness, so the Son of God was born; and by the debt of the singleness, so he died (straf).⁸ By the admonishing of the Three-ness, so he did the resurrection among the humans; and by the debt of the singleness, he went up to his Father. Thus it is also yet with us.

By the debt that is admonished to us of the Three-ness, so grace is given to us worthily, to live fittingly after the noble Three-ness. And when we mis-work that with strange will, and out of that singleness fall into our conveniences, so we remain un-grown and un-recovered from the completeness to which we are thus admonished from the beginning of the singleness and of the Three-ness.

But if the noble reason of the rational human would understand her worthy debt and follow the lead that Love would give her in her land — were they to follow her after her fittingness — then it would stand well with them to follow the great, and to be rich in God with divine richness. Who would clothe himself, and be rich and one with the Godhead, he shall adorn himself with all virtues — yes, where God himself was clothed and adorned when he lived as man. And one shall begin at the same humility where he began. That was: to be forsaken of all strange comfort; and un-raised of all nobility; and of all virtue and works and mightinesses, of which he was the highest, and from which he remained un-raised — until the time that he was raised up from the fearful wondrous admonishing of the singleness.

We are now in the admonishing of Love to the Holy Three-ness. Therefore we should admonish ourselves to Love, what we can perform with all diligence, and we should admonish no other thing than his singleness. And after her pleasure should we live — who has at all hours admonished singleness, and who has adorned un-raised humility with right works; and after the admonishing of the holy Three-ness, who admonishes such complete virtue always after her fitting, with which one here grows and becomes complete — both threefold and one. In three things one here lives Love with three-ness, and there above in singleness.

The first is — that one here longs for Love with reason and to be enough to her with all right works of completenesses, and to be complete and worthy of all completeness. Therewith one lives the Son of God.

The second is — that one wills all-of-Love-her-will at all hours with new diligence, and works all virtues with flowing longing, and illumines each creature after her wesen, and after her fittingness of her nobility — in which one recognizes her in nobilities or in basenesses. Then one shall work in her, and love for Love's honor the single will of our God. Herewith one lives the Holy Spirit.

The third is — to be in bonds of steady practice, in sweet constraint and in un-conquered strength — to perform this wesen well, strong and un-conquered and joyful and equally-eager, Love into Love grown-through in all: to work with his hands, to wander with his feet, to hear with his ears (where the voice of the Godhead does not cease to speak through the mouth of the Beloved in all truth of counsel, of righteousness, of sweet sweetness of comfort to each at his need, and of threatening of misdeed) — with the Beloved to bear oneself without bearing un-adorned — and to do nothing else than the Beloved with the Beloved himself — as one Beloved in Beloved, with one manner, with one sense, with one breast the other through to suck the unheard-of sweetness, which has earned its pain. Ay yes, heart in heart to feel with one single heart and one single sweet Love, and lovingly to have fruition of one full-grown Love. And that one ever-surely knows beyond all doubt that one is whole in single Love. With this wesen one is the Father.⁷

Thus one repays here the debt of the Three-ness which she admonishes, and which she has admonished the singleness from beginning without beginning. That is true — those who thus live to Love do many fair upward-fares in their Beloved with their Beloved. But like those who, full-grown, whole and without turning, do their upward-fare into the up-remaining, and there gather together — where the great light, the clear lightning has shot forth, and the strong thunder has after stricken. Lightning is light of Love who shows herself in a flight, and gives grace in many things to show who she is, and how she can take and give in sweetness of embrace, in dear holdings, in sweet kisses and in over-heartful feeling, where Love herself speaks: I am who has caught you. This I am. I am to you all. I give to you all. But then comes the thunder after. Thunder is the fearful voice of threatening, and the suspending, and the enlightened Reason which shows truth, and debt, and un-grown-ness, and him so small and Love so great.

When this is gathered out of many-fold gifts, then one becomes all that-same that that is. And then first the singleness has what she has admonished, and then first the admonishing is begun aright, and then one may have fruition of the Three-ness who had hitherto bound her. Then they shall evermore in one hour admonish and repay in one wesen, in one will, in one having, in one fruition.

How this is — of that I dare not now say, for I am too un-grown and have too little Love; that is my lacking and the lacking of those who fall short of it. That does the deceiving of truth — that we have so fair beginnings and small works, and on that-same want soon to seize, and rest on that. We want to be borne-up of our long time, and ready of good works, and forget Love's debt too soon. We hold our works for good — therefore they become idle. We know our misery — therefore we do not find our Beloved in it. We recognize our labor as great — therefore we find there no rich lodging of comfort and of sweet rest, which Beloved gives Beloved who has visited him from far with great adventures. We want our virtue to be recognized — therefore we have not the wedding-garment of it. We work our caritas by onst (favor), not by need — therefore we possess not her wide power. Our humility is in the voice, and in the bearing, and in the seeming — and not in fulness on account of God's greatness, or because we recognize our smallness. Therefore we do not bear the Son of God motherly, nor do we suckle him with the exercise of Love.

We have too much will, and we want too much rest, and we seek too much comfort and peace. We become too easily weary and beaten-down and discouraged. We seek too much solace from God and from people. We do not want to bear any mishap. We want to know too well what we are lacking — and then are so anxious-of-heart to attain it, and want not to suffer. Anything can grieve us — if one despises us, or mistrusts us anything of God, or robs us of our rest, or of our honor, or of our friends. We want to be godly in the church and from all things from without to know what helps us and harms us within house and elsewhere. And so we are accustomed to exercise our friends in speaking, in practice, in being-angry, in reconciliation. We want to have good name with little service of Love, and we are anxious-of-heart in clean clothes, in fine food, in fair things, in utmost merry-makings, of which no one has need. For no one need gambol-himself (verspelen) for the sake of God.

He comes at all hours with new strength. For when we grow weak by our baseness — that may we mock with better sense and with greater profit. But because we satisfy our weakness too soon, and comfort with lownesses, and deceive ourselves, and forget the wisdom from above — therefore we do not stretch the reach of God, and therefore we are not by God upheld nor comforted nor fed. For we fail God, not he us. And because we hold back to ourselves something — even before Love — therefore we do not bear her crown, nor become by her exalted nor honored.

Therefore we are hindered in all sinnen, and therefore we lack right fidelity and Love. And because so many of all these lacks are in us, so we remain un-grown in spirituality and un-complete in all virtues. And therefore can no one help another. Alas, this is in us all too true.

Now must God in us all better, and give us such complete wesen that we may be enough to the Three-ness in living, and to the singleness of the Godhead be made-single. Amen.

Letter XXXI

XXXI. The Best Life — Your Death and Mine Shall Be One (the closing Letter of the corpus)

Ay dear child, the best life is this: to stand after God, to do him enough with Love, and to trust him above all (optima vita). For with trust one comes most-closely to him. For he himself said to one human — that right prayer were nothing else than high trust to himself, with complete fidelity to trust to him with all that he is. For he himself says (vera oratio est):

Those people who do not know me and my goodness — who I am — they serve me with fasting and with waking, and with manifold labor. And with that labor they entrust themselves to me. But me can nothing so close-compel as complete trust of high fidelity. The hunger of dear souls, he says, makes me ready all, that I shall be yours, that I am. For your hunger of me to be enough — therewith you have grown up. And be you to me as I. Your death and mine shall be one. Therefore we shall live with one life, and one Love shall fill both our hungers.⁴

Therefore I tell you this joy, which our Lord said, so that you may all the better believe it, and bethink and know that trust and fidelity are the closest perfection, by which one may most completely and best be enough to God. By this I admonish you to the most-complete freedom of Love — because once I dreamed of you here before, that you should learn my signs;⁵ so I admonish you. For this you hold most-dear to me, above all things. Haste you to virtue in righteous Love, and see that God be honored by you, and by all those from whom you may forward it with strength, with cost, with counsel, and with all that you may perform without sparing. AMEN.

¹ The famous I-saw-God-God-and-human-human passage. Quoted by Ruusbroec; cited as the doctrinal climax of the Brieven by every modern Hadewijch scholar. The structural progression: (i) seeing the divine and human as distinct, no wonder; (ii) seeing God become human and the human become god, no wonder that the human is most-blessed with God. Verweent (most-blessed) is the Hadewijchian superlative for the divinized state.

² The most direct biographical reference to Hadewijch's exile or imprisonment. The Letter does not specify either circumstance, but the parallel construction eest in doelne achter lande, eest in ghevancnesse (whether wandering through the lands, or in prison) suggests the writer was actually in one or both of these states at the time of writing — or had reason to expect both as imminent possibilities. Scholars correlate this with the contemporary mid-13th-century persecution of unorthodox Beguine communities; the chronological context strengthens but cannot prove the biographical link.

^2a The dearest human living, after Sara. The Sara of the Lijst der volmaakten (Visions VI), the young converted Jewess of Cologne whom Hadewijch ranks fifteenth among the perfected. The reference identifies the Letter's addressee as a member of Hadewijch's own circle — one who knew Sara, or knew of her, in the same way Hadewijch did.

^2b I have lived too little with people in their customs. The most explicit ascetic-biographical self-description in the entire corpus: Hadewijch declares she has not shared the ordinary human routines of food, drink, sleep, or even appearance. The negative catalogue is unusually concrete: clothes, dyes / colors, make-up — the very signs of belonging-to-the-world by which the mulieres religiosae movement was visibly identifiable to a thirteenth-century observer.

^2c Armariolo / antisma. The famous Latin medical-anatomy passage. Armariolo (= Latin armariolum, the inner-chamber, with reference to the heart's vessels) and antisma (an obscure / hapax term, possibly from Greek anthisma, the inmost) — both glossed in situ by Hadewijch herself. The passage is one of the most textually-identifying in the entire corpus: it deploys scholastic-Latin medical terminology in the service of Beguine love-mysticism, and is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that Hadewijch had at least passing exposure to scholastic Latin. The wounding-of-Love motif is the standard vulnus amoris of twelfth- and thirteenth-century love-mysticism (Bernard, Richard of St Victor), here given anatomical precision.

^2d Plain to all wrong (Dat te onrechte es openbare). Vercoullie's text is opaque here; the rendering is a guess at the sense — "the virtue I am ready-set with is plain even to all who wrong me," or possibly "ready-set with virtue, which is plainly known to all wrong" (i.e. recognized even by the wrong-doers among whom I lived). The reading is uncertain.

^2e I am the human who with Christ unto death must suffer in love. The climactic imitatio passionis statement of the entire Brieven — the most direct verbal application of Christ's passion to Hadewijch's own life. The threefold structure — (i) suffering shame among strangers, (ii) until Love comes to herself, (iii) until Love is grown-through with us in virtues — names the historical trajectory of Love's incarnation in the perfected: Christ's passion is not over; it continues in the mulieres religiosae who suffer shame among strangers as Christ did, until Love becomes one with the people. The Letter's autobiographical core is also its corpus-level theological climax.

³ qui amat non laborat — recurs from Letter VI's earlier statement of the doctrine. Letter XXX is the corpus's last sustained development of the theme.

⁴ Your death and mine shall be one. The voice of God speaking to the soul — the corpus's apophatic-bridal climax. Hadewijch then resumes in her own voice (the following paragraph) to gloss the saying, invoke her dream-vision of the addressee, and close the corpus with AMEN. The Vercoullie 1895 edition prints this closing paragraph in full; the AMEN is missing only in MS C, which Vercoullie footnotes (his note 3 at the source's final line). The corpus does not break off mid-image — its actual closing is Hadewijch's hortative Haste you to virtue in righteous Love.

⁵ Because once I dreamed of you here before, that you should learn my signs. One of the most striking biographical-relational sentences in the entire corpus: Hadewijch had a prior dream-vision of the Letter's addressee in which the addressee was to learn my signs — i.e. to receive Hadewijch's mystical-pedagogical instruction. The dream is among the few self-reflexive metatextual moments in the Brieven: Hadewijch positions her own teaching-to-the-addressee as the fulfillment of a divine prefiguring. The phrase mine tekene (my signs / my tokens) is also one of the corpus's strongest verbal claims to a settled pedagogical doctrine — Hadewijch teaches tekene (signs), not mere experiences.

⁶ De mensche godlec. The source preserves a part-of-speech asymmetry: God becomes mensche (noun: "human / man" — full incarnation), but the human becomes godlec (adjective: "godly / divine / god-like" — divinized state, not identity). An earlier rendering "the human god" read in English as a noun-noun pair and obscured the asymmetry; godlec is the adjective, and the human is divinized rather than ontologically identified with God.

⁷ Source has es men ("one is") in the third Trinity-life position, against levet men ("one lives") in the Son- and Spirit-positions. The structural progression is theologically load-bearing: by Reason one lives the Son (active imitative); by working through every creature one lives the Holy Spirit (active mediating); in the bond of single-Love-fruition one is the Father (ontological identity at the apophatic ground). The Father-position is identity, not imitation; collapsing es → levet would dissolve Hadewijch's deliberate Trinity-life climax into a flat triad.

⁸ Straf → starf. Source reads straf (MD: "was strict / chastened," from the verb strafen). Emended starf (past of sterven, "died") demanded by the parallel structure "born–died–rose–ascended"; the r/n manuscript confusion is plausible. The rendering "he died (straf)" preserves the source token in parenthesis so the reader can see what the underlying text says.

⁹ Weelde / weeldecheit. MD weelde is one of the standard mystical-affective register words ("delight / abundance / sumptuousness / festal joy"), not a possession-term. An earlier rendering "wealth / wealthy-ness" tilted the term toward material-possession; "delight / delight-ness" preserves the affective register. The hemelsche weeldecheit at the cascade-of-wandering is correspondingly rendered "heavenly delight." Distinguished from rijcheit ("richness / wealth"), which is the material-possession-term Hadewijch in fact uses for the divine plenitude-of-being.

JSON: /api/sources/beguine-mystics/hadewijch-brieven/vol-10-01-letters-28-31.json