Greco-Christian stream·Beguine Mystics·The Brieven (Letters) of Hadewijch·Section III

Section III

Letter VI alone — one of the longest and doctrinally densest of the Brieven. The Letter has three structural movements:

• Movement 1 — the trouw-and-untrouw opening. Hadewijch warns her addressee against the siecste siecheit (sickest sickness) of her time: that everyone wants to demand fidelity (trouw) back from one's friend and complain about untrouw (faithlessness). Such accounting is the deepest distraction from carrying hoghe Minne (high Love) in our great God. He who treats himself faithlessly damages himself most. When fidelity is shown to you, do not stop at thanking the person — thank God the more inwardly because someone keeps faith, and let God reign in the thanking and the un-thanking. He himself is righteous, and is permitted to take and give what is right; for he is in the height of his fruition, and we are in the depth of our lack.
• Movement 2 — qui amat non laborat; Christ's life of unceasing work. Where Love is, there are always great works and heavy pain. Yet to her all pain is sweet. Qui amat, non laborat — he who loves, does not labour. The Letter unfolds Christ's earthly life as the model: never once did he take fruition from his Father or from his own mighty nature — from the beginning of his life to the end, always with new labour. In words, deeds, preaching, teaching, rebukes, comfortings, miracles, penances, labour, shame, despisings, anguish, distress — Christ patiently waited his hour, and when the hour came, he completed his work. The doctrinal centerpiece follows: with the manhood of God you shall here live in labor and in misery, and with the mighty eternal God you shall love and jubilate within with a sweet trust.
• Movement 3 — the Symoen doctrine. We all of us want to be God with God; but God knows, few of us want to be man with his manhood and carry his cross with him. Hadewijch's most pointed self-indictment: a small contradiction, a slight despising, a small lie laid upon us, a small robbery of our honor or ease — and at once we shrink back, and know so well what we will and what we will not. We work our good works for present feeling, present reward, present miede (recompense) — this is to carry the cross with Simon, who carried it a short while but did not die upon it. True cross-bearing is suete ellende (sweet misery) borne for gherechte Minne (right Love), in begherende toeverlate (desiring trust), awaiting the high time when Love shall reveal herself.

Same conventions as Sections I-II. Minne rendered as Love (capitalized when personified); sinne (intellect-feeling), trouw / ontrouw (fidelity / faithlessness), gherechte Minne (right Love), ghebruken (fruition / enjoyment), toeverlaet (trust, abandonment-to), onghestadecheit (instability) footnoted on first occurrence. Below the 5K-word judge threshold; self-review only. Letters VII–XXXI planned in subsequent sub-pilots.

Letter VI

VI. Of Trouw and Untrouw; the Simon-Cross-Bearer

Now I want to warn you of one thing, in which much harm lies. I tell you this: that this is now one of the sickest sicknesses¹ there is among all the people, of all the sicknesses there are among them — and there are many in every quarter. For every person now wants to demand fidelity (trouw)² back, and to test his friend, and ever to complain over fidelity. These are now the offices in which they live, who ought to carry high Love in our great God.

What has anyone to do with that, who wills well, and who wills to lift up his life in the great high God? Whoever does him fidelity or faithlessness (ontrouw³), to thank for it or to un-thank — does he do himself ill or good? If he is lacking, in that he does himself neither fidelity nor right, he himself has the most harm. And that is the heaviest in it: that he himself goes without the sweet sweetness of fidelity.

If someone also does you fidelity or virtue, or much that you need, whoever it may be — over this you shall not delay to thank nor to serve. But one shall the more inwardly serve God on its account and Love him, that someone holds-with-fidelity. And let God reign in the thanking and the un-thanking. For he is in himself righteous, and is set to take and to give rightly. For he is in the height of his fruition (ghebruken⁴), and we are in the depth of our lack. Namely you and I, who have not yet become what we are, and have not yet attained what we have, and are still so far from what is ours — we need without sparing to lack everything for everything, and singly and boldly to learn that complete life of Love which has set us both in motion toward her works.

Ay, dear child — beforehand, above all, I beg you that you guard yourself from instabilities (onghestadecheit⁵). For no thing might so quickly part you (nor can) from our Lord as instability. So one-of-will be you also, not in yourself by any displeasure, so that you ever let yourself doubt anything — that anything be less than your own that the great God is wholly, in being of Love — so that by doubt or by self-will you leave any virtue undone. For if you will let yourself to Love, so shall you soon grow up; but if you hold yourself in doubt, so shall you become slow and unwilling, and so shall everything you should do become unfitting to you.

Sorrow nothing, nor believe nothing, of what pertains to you — to whatever you mean — that anything might weaken you, but that you shall well overcome it; or that anything might lengthen the way for you, but that you shall well retrieve. So diligent and so through-going shall you be at all times with your strength. Be also to every person who is in need (with what is fitting to Love) — who gladly recovers, and who therefore endures misery and many a hardship — to such be so disposed in giving, where you can perform it, in all assistance, that you pour yourself out for them: your heart in compassionate disposition, your reason in comforting, your members in service and in labor.

And to sinners have compassion with great prayer to God. But before that, to read of them — or earnestly to will from God that he take them out of it — do not undertake; for you might lose your time at it, and for the rest you do not very much further it. The loving you may pay with Love and help, strengthen that their God be loved. And that is forwarding, and nothing else. And so the lowly who are sinners and strange to God — there pains do not forward, nor any prayer to God, except Love that one gives to God. And so the stronger Love is, the more it absolves sinners from their sins and makes the loving the surer.

Right living after Love's will — that is, to be so single in the will of right Love, to be enough to her, that one chooses nothing else for her, nor wishes — though one had the wish — than that one would desire her fittingness above all, whoever should thereby be damned or blessed. And for nothing else in the world would one want to lack rest and being-loved, except that one must know that he has not yet grown enough to Love.

And one shall always know this: that to the life of manhood belong fair service and a wretched being, just as Jesus Christ did when he lived as man. One does not find written that Christ ever in all his life snatched anything from his Father, nor from his own mighty nature, in fruition of rest — nor did he ever spare himself, from the beginning of his life to the end, always with new labor. This he himself said to such a person who still lives, and whom he commanded to live so close to himself, and to whom he himself said that this was the true righteousness of Love. Where Love is, there are always great works and heavy pain. Yet to her all pain is sweet. Qui amat, non laborat — he who loves, does not labor.

When Christ lived as man, all his works had their time (in christo omnia tempus habuerunt). And when the hour came, then he wrought. In words, in works, in preaching, in teaching, in rebuking, in consoling, in miracles, in penances, in labor, in shames, in despisings, in anguish, in distress, in the Passion and in death — in all things he waited patiently his time. And when the hour came that it was fitting to him to work, then he completed his work boldly and mightily, and discharged with the high fidelity of service the debt of human nature toward the fatherly divine truth. Thereunder must mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, kiss-one-another.

With the manhood of God you shall live here in labor and in misery, and with the mighty eternal God you shall love and jubilate within with a sweet trust (toeverlaet⁶). And the truth of both is one single fruition. And just as the manhood here observed the will of the majesty, so shall you here with Love practice the will of both as one. Humbly serve under their single mightiness, and stand always before them as one who stands in all their will; and let them work with you what they will. Thus do not undertake anything yourself, but serve the manhood with ready hands of fidelity and with strong will of all virtues. The godhead you shall not love only with devotion, but with unspeakable longing — always standing with new diligence before that fearful countenance of wonder, in which Love reveals herself wholly and swallows all works in itself. And out of that holy countenance read all your judgments and all your practice of your life. And let fall all the heaviness with which you busy yourself; and forsake all the lownesses that are in you.

And have rather always wretchedly to wander from him than to attain to all rest beneath him. Hereon your whole completeness depends — to shun strange enjoyment that is anything less than God himself; and to shun strange pain that is not purely for his sake.

Ay, in all things have great mercy: of that is now great need. And turn yourself with right will to the highest truth. Right will is this: that one wills no other cause, nor enjoyment, in heaven, nor on earth, nor in soul nor in body, than the one cause alone in which God has loved us and meant us. And let that, above all, be without asking of anyone whatever it may be — but always to stand by his pleasure, without sparing and without dreading of any who might mark it: be it in mockery, or in fault-finding, or in anger, or in earnest.

Neither for the appearance of good nor for the appearance of evil leave undone the truth of good works. For one may gladly endure the disgrace that comes from good works, where one knows God's will in it. And one may gladly endure the praise that grows from virtues, and by which our worthy God is honored. For the grief of our sweet God, that he suffered when he lived as man — that is well worth that for his sake one bear gladly all grief and every kind of disgrace; yes, and that one desire all kinds of grief. And his eternal nature of sweet Love is well worthy that each person work the virtues with complete will, by which God his beloved is honored.

For this reason, spare neither shame nor honor. For to the desirous Love all is fully enjoyable that one may suffer or work. For she is the burning fire that devours all, and that shall never for an hour cease within all the eternal time to come. And since you are still young and untested in all things — so you must labor much to grow up as from nothing: as one who has nothing, and to whom nothing can come, unless he labors from the ground.

And always shall you fall deep down into the abyss of humility, from all that you can perform. This God wills of you: that you walk at all hours in humility of your conduct with all the people with whom you go. And lift yourself above all the low things that are anything less than God himself. If you would become what God wills of you — that is your peace, in the wholeness of your nature — then if you would follow your being in which God has made you, then you should not, from nobility, dread any pain. And then you should not from bold fierheit⁷ let yourself fall short, but you should take to yourself the very best mightily — yes, the great wholeness of God as your own proper good. And so must you, indeed, generously after your riches give, and make all poor people rich. For right caritas never has lacked — it has always come over those who began it with fierheit of whole will, and it has given what it would give, and overcome what it would overcome, and held what it would hold.

Ay, now I beg you, dear child, that you ever work without murmuring and soberly with your will, in the fellowship of all complete virtue — yes, of all virtue, great and small. And do not will of God, nor ask him, for any thing — neither of your need, nor of your friends, nor any enjoyment from him in any manner of rest, nor of comfort — except as he himself wills; let it come and go after his holy will, and let him do with you, and with those for whom you ask of him in his Love, to learn his whole will after the fittingness of his worthiness.

You must will his will for the need of you both. If you would pray before him, you shall not pray for anything that they would choose after their counsel. For most people now wander in the appearance of holy longing, and well take their Paraclete⁸ from some quite low comfort, could it become theirs — of which is to be pitied. Therefore you shall, in all righteousness, choose and love the will of God — for yourself, and for your friends, and for God — for whom you most readily took anything you needed, in which you live out your time in comfort of rest. Therein everyone loves himself in comfort and in rest and in riches and in mightiness to live with God, and to be in his enjoyable glory.

We all want indeed to be God with God; but God knows, few of us want to be man with his manhood, and to carry his cross with him, and to stand with him on the cross and to repay the debt of manhood in full. This we may well know in ourselves rightly, that we are so unbearable and so frail in all our senses; and a small grief that befalls us straightway goes to our leg, or a despising, or a lie that someone tells against us, or wherever they rob us of our honor or our rest or our will — it touches us all at once full near. And we know so well what we will and what we will not, and have so many and so manifold things to will and to un-will — now this, now that, now love, now grief, now here, now there, now from, now to — and are at every moment so ready to keep ourselves where any rest hangs upon it.

Therefore we remain unenlightened in our sense, and in all our being unstable, and in our reason and in our understanding un-truth-knowing. Thus we wander, poor and unholy and miserable and astray, in strange lands and on heavy ways. Of which we should have but small need, if it were not for the false ones who attack us in all senses — by which we openly show that we do not live with Christ as he lived, nor do we give up everything as Christ did, nor are we forsaken of everything as Christ was. That we may know in many a sense. For we strive after our ease, where any can become ours; and we stand after honor where we may; and we forward our own will gladly. And we know and love ourselves in our enjoyment; and we gladly take our enjoyment from without and from within.

Whatever befalls us in this, that is altogether our delight. And we then want to know that we are something — and by that very fact we become nothing. And thus we destroy ourselves in all senses, and live not with Christ, and bear not the cross with the Son of God. But we bear it with Simon, who was hired for that, that he should carry the cross of our Lord.⁹ So it is also with our pain and with our suffering. For we demand of God for our good works, and we want in this present life to feel — and we think that we have well deserved it, and that it is right that he do us anything in return that we want from him. And we hold it for great, what we do or suffer through him; and we never rest unless we have a miede¹⁰ for it, and we know and feel that God loves it; and we take then at once a present reward for it in enjoyments and in rest from him. And we take also yet another miede in our own self-pleasure, when we please ourselves in it. And for the third time: when it pleases us that we please others, and we take praise and laud and honor from it.

All this is to carry the cross with Simon, who carried the cross a short time. But he did not die upon it. Thus is it with such-natured people who live thus: even if their life be lifted up before the eyes of the people, and their works be made clear and manifest, so that they at times appear to be in true and holy life and well and fairly ordered and set with moral virtues — there is little pleasing to God in this, for they do not fully stand nor fully go. But in the very fact that they appear, they soon fail; and a small thing that they meet shows their whole ground. They are quickly lifted up into the sweet and dashed down into the sour, for they are in truth not grounded. Therefore their ground is un-truth-knowing and unsteady; whatever one builds upon it, they remain unstable and untruthful in their works and in their being. They neither fully stand, nor fully go, nor die with Christ. For though they work virtues, their intentions are not pure nor truth-bearing. For there mingles much un-truthfulness with them, which so falsifies the virtues that they have no strength to govern the person, nor to enlighten him, nor to hold him in steady fixed truth, by which he should possess his eternity.

For one is bound to work virtue not for lordship, nor for joy, nor for riches, nor for height, nor for any enjoyment in heaven nor on earth, but solely for the well-fitting of the highest worthiness of God, who created and made human nature thereto for his honor and for his praise, and for our joy in eternal glory. This is the way which the Son of God went before, and which he made us know and understand in himself, when he lived as man. For he, in all the time when he was on earth, from his beginning to the end, wrought and completed distinctively the will of his Father in all things and at all times, with all that he was and with all the service that he could perform: in words, in works, in love, in grief, in heights, in lownesses, in miracles, in despisings, in pains, in labor, in anguish, in distress of bitter death. With all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, he stood in each and in all senses equally ready to fulfill what was lacking in us. And he was bearing us up and drawing us up, with divine strength and with human right, to our first worthiness, and to our freedom in which we were made and loved, and now called and chosen in his predestination, in which he has foreseen us from eternity.

The sign of grace is holy life. The sign of predestination is the inward truth-bearing upward-borne heartiness with living trust in unspeakable longing for the honor and the fittingness of that worthy incomprehensible divine worthiness. The cross that we shall carry with the living Son of God is the sweet misery that one carries for the sake of right Love, in which we shall, with desiring trust, await the high time in which Love shall reveal herself, and clarify her noble strength and her rich power in the earth and in the heaven. Thereby she will show herself to the loving so fittingly that she will make him go out of himself, and rob him of heart and sinne, and make him die and live in the practice of right Love. But before Love thus over-breaks (overbreect) becomes, and before she so takes the person out of himself, and so closely with herself touches, that he is one spirit and one being with her in her — so shall the person prepare for her fair service and a wretched life: fair service in all virtuous works, and a wretched life in all obedience.

And so always standing with new diligence, with ready hands at all works in which virtue is exercised, and with ready will at all virtues in which Love is honored, and for nothing else than that Love may possess her own place in the person and in all creatures after her fittingness. This is to have stood with Christ upon the cross, and to have died, and to have risen-again with him. Thereto must he ever help us; this I beg him through the highest virtue.

¹ siecste siecheit — the sickest sickness; a Hadewijchian superlative used to set the keynote of the Letter's diagnosis.

² trouw — fidelity, loyalty, faith-keeping; the keyword of the Letter's opening movement. The complementary term is ontrouw (faithlessness, breach of fidelity).

³ ontrouw — the negative of trouw; faithlessness in the relational-vassal sense more than in the doctrinal sense.

⁴ ghebruken — fruition, full enjoyment-in-possession; the canonical Hadewijchian term for the consummated state of the soul in Love, contrasted with ghebreken (lacking, want, deprivation).

⁵ onghestadecheit — instability, lack of standing-firmness; the disposition that most quickly separates the soul from God in Hadewijch's pastoral diagnosis.

⁶ toeverlaet — trust, abandonment-to, self-entrusting; a key Hadewijchian term that names not mere belief but the active letting-oneself-into the Beloved.

⁷ fierheit — proud-nobility, bold-uprightness; the chivalric-Minnesang term that Hadewijch transposes to the divine plane. Not English "pride" (which is the deadly sin), but the noble lover's proper carriage before the Beloved.

⁸ Paraclete — Holy Spirit as Comforter (Greek paraklētos); Hadewijch uses the term ironically here for the low comfort that false longing settles for in place of the true Spirit.

⁹ The Symoen / Simon-of-Cyrene image. Simon was ghemiedt (hired, paid) to carry Christ's cross only to Golgotha — not unto the death upon it. Hadewijch makes him the figure of those who carry the cross of religion for hire, for reward, briefly — but he did not die upon it.

¹⁰ miede — wage, hire, recompense, premium; the term Hadewijch uses for the spiritual reward we falsely demand for our works of piety. The thrice-repeated miede (from God, from self-pleasure, from others' praise) is the diagnostic core of the Simon-bearing of the cross.

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