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

Section VII

Four doctrinally weighted Letters of the middle range, including two of the structural high-points of the corpus:

• Letter XVI — Living in high hope of strong trust. On seeking after God's will, not after one's own affection. The famous lime-band image: where two things shall become one, nothing can be between them but the glue that binds them together; the band of lime is Love, with which God and the blessed soul are bound in one (ubi duo unum fiunt). Christ as the model of all-letting-fall — Father, the hour has come (pater venit hora).
• Letter XVII — the famous Five Prohibitions Letter, opening in verse. To every virtue be ready and quick. Undertake nothing else. Lack in no thing. Work in no singular thing. To every need have onst and compassion. And take nothing into your protection. The doctrinal kernel: these prohibitions were what God forbade me, four years ago, on Ascension-feast. The Trinity-formula in the Letter: the first word is the Father's mightiness; the second his right willing; the third the Son's not-taking-into-protection; the fourth his over-throwing his Father. The classic Hadewijchian autobiographical disclosure: I cannot say much more, for the strangers would plant nettles where the roses should stand.
• Letter XVIII — the great definition of the soul Letter, one of the canonical doctrinal high-points of the corpus. Soul is a being that is visible to God, and God visible to her in return (quid est anima). The soul as a way through which God passes into his freedom of his deepest, and God as a way through which the soul passes into her freedom. The two eyes of caritas: Love and Reason — Reason teaches, Love illumines (ratio docet, amor illuminat). The doctrine of the motherly-suckled and fatherly-chastened soul that hangs unseparably on God. Cited frequently by Ruusbroec and the later Brabant mystical tradition.
• Letter XIX — a brief verse Letter (rhymed couplets in Middle Dutch). I love my Beloved and my Beloved me. The closing image: the soul that has become nothing in God's will is the most God-like soul; the two halves of the soul rejoined by Love's light — as the moon receives her light from the sun, so the half-soul receives from the divine light. Onely the bond of inward Love can guard them.

Same conventions as Sections I-VI. Minne → Love, caritate → caritas (Pauline term), fierheit → noble-pride, toeverlaet → trust, ghebruken → fruition, enecheit → singleness. Section VII vocabulary keys: bant van lime (band-of-lime, glue-bond), onst (favor, gracious gift), ongherijnlec (un-touched, un-troubled).

Letter XVI

XVI. Living in High Hope of Strong Trust; the Lime-Band

God be with you, and may he teach you the right ways that belong to high right Love. Be wakeful and skillful in your matter, and earnest in yourself and in your seeking, and steady in your faith (secundum voluntatem Dei quaere et accipies), so that you may seek truth-bearingly — not after your own affection, but after the will of God. So shall you attain all that he has loved you to (spe).

You shall also live high in hope of strong trust, that God will give you to love him with that great Love with which he himself loves himself threefold-and-single, and with which he has eternally been enough to himself and shall eternally be. To be enough to him with this Love — therefore are all the heavenly ones unceasing, and shall be eternal (officium beatorum). That is their office, which is never accomplished. And the lacking of that fruition — that is the sweetest fruition.

After this shall the earthly stand with humble heart, and shall know that they are altogether too small for such great Love and for so high Love and for so unsatisfied a Beloved — to be enough with Love. Ay, that un-wrought work shall storm every good soul, and make her cast off all over-fulness and all that is uneven, and all that she is, other than wholly to be enough thereunto for Love.

Where two things shall become one, nothing may be between them but lime,⁴ with which one binds them together. The band of lime is Love, in which God and the blessed soul are bound in one (ubi duo unum fiunt). To this high trust the holy Love admonishes at all hours the noble fier soul who would understand it (semper monet), and who would cast all off for Love — as he himself cast all off when he was sent by his Father, and when he completed the work that Love had commanded him to do; as he himself said in the Gospel: Father, the hour is come (pater venit hora). Therein he said to his Father: I have completed the work which you gave me to do.

Now mark how he lived, and the holy ones who remained after him, and the good people who still live, and those who shall work this great Love which God is (sic vivendum). They live always in humble heart and in earnestness of good works without sparing (secundum justitiam). Live after righteousness — not after your enjoyment, nor after your convenience in any way, except so much as you know that honor and right is done to God after his fittingness.

Leave yourself fatherly upon his high virtue. Be ready for good counsel that your friends give you, who would gladly see you go forward. And whoever else gives you good counsel toward virtue, hear him gladly. And all your suffering — suffer gladly for the sake of Love. You are too weak of heart, and too childish in all your manners (tristitia vituperanda). You are too quickly saddened and untempered in all you do. What helps — reckon of all things; hold yourself moderate for the sake of the highest worthiness of God (laborem indicit), and pain yourself to labor.

Idleness is very dangerous for the one who would become godly (otium vitandum). For idleness is the mistress of all evil. Always pray, or love, or work virtue, or serve the sick (semper exerce). For Love's honor, bear the angry and the ignorant (tolera iracundos). Be glad (gaude) in the spirit of God, because he himself alone is enough and is Love. Be always glad among your fellowship, and let all their pain be yours — as St Paul says: Who is sick, and I am not?

Guard all your words so truth-bearingly as though spoken before Christ, who himself is the Truth. That I preach to you so much — that may pain you, of manners that you yourself well know and have all (imo praedicat ei). But I do it for an admonishing of the truth: that whoever shall have Love must begin at the virtues, where God himself began, and his saints — as one reads of the martyrs, that they conquered the kingdoms by faith (sancti per fidem vicerunt). It is not said by Love. That is because faith steadies Love; but Love fiery-makes the faith. So must the works with that faith be before Love — so shall Love make them fiery. Therefore content yourself, for I wrote it to you in good (imo scripsit).

Letter XVII

XVII. The Five Prohibitions

To every virtue be onst-full and quick.¹ Undertake nothing else. Lack in no thing. Work in no singular thing. To every need have onst² and compassion, And take nothing into your protection (nihil sub tua defensione).

This I would have long said to you, For it lies hard upon my heart. God let you know what I mean — In the single nature of Love alone.

These things were forbidden me by God, that I in these words forbid you. Therefore I desire to forbid them to you, in that they perfectly belong to the completeness of Love, and in that they perfectly and wholly belong in the Godhead.

The wesene I name there — they are perfectly his nature. For to-be-favoring-and-quick (velocitas pertinet ad sanctum Spiritum) is the nature of the Holy Spirit; therewith he is a proper Person. Not to undertake any singular thing — that is the nature of the Father; therewith he is the only Father. To give-out and to hold-on (tribuere et hoc retinere) — this is the pure Godhead and the whole nature of Love, and lacks in no thing and works in no singular thing.

The first word is the strength of the Father, by which he is almighty God. The second word is his right willing, with which his righteousness works her unknown mighty works, which are deep and dark and unknown and hidden from all who are below this unity of the Godhead, as I say — yet which serve the Persons properly and over-fairly. According to the first words I said: to every virtue, to be favoring and quick, and to lack in no thing, and to every need to have compassionate favor: this seems the most complete life that one may have on earth. And this you always heard: that I always counseled it above all; and also I lived it above all, and served therein and wrought over-fairly until the day that it was forbidden me (inhibita haec vita).

The three other words I say — they make singleness and Love perfect, and according to righteousness in one Person devote themselves wholly. One Love and nothing else. Ay deus, what a fearful wesen is that, that swallows up such hatred and such caritas in one!

To every need have favor and compassion — that was the Son in proper Person. That he did fairly, and wrought fairly. And take nothing into your protection — therewith he swallowed up his Father⁸ (nil sub defensione). That cruel great work is ever his. And that is the most fair singleness of Love of the Godhead — that she is there so right of righteousness of Love (hic remonet misericordias), that she takes up the earnest and the manhood and the strength by which one would not let any be lacking. And she takes up the caritas and the mercy that one had for those of hell, and on those of purgatory, and on those unknown to God, and on those known who wander outside his dearest will, and on the loving who have woe above all this: that they go without what they love. All this righteousness takes up into herself (hoc justitia absorbet). Yet each Person particularly gave forth what was his, as I have said.

But the right nature, with which Love is herself with Love and complete fruition — she undertakes neither virtue (non intromittit se de virtutibus) nor favor of virtue, nor singular work, however fair they may be and of however fair authority; nor does she shelter by mercy any need, which she is so mighty to make rich. For in that fruition of Love there was never, nor may there be, any work other than that single fruition, by which the only mighty Godhead is Love (unicum opus tuum).

The forbidding that I have said to you, which was forbidden me — that was: to have unrighteousness of Love on earth, and not to spare what is outside Love, and so closely to practice Love, that all that is outside Love be hated (omnia alia in odio), and avenged thereon — so that one have no other favor toward them, nor virtue, nor do any singular work to bear with them, nor mercy to shelter them — but stroke upon stroke in fruition of Love (in deficiendo). But in the failing and in the sinking of lacking, then one does well work all three of the forbidden works, by debt and by right. When one seeks Love and serves her, then one must do all things for her honor. For all that while one is human and needing; and then one must in all things fairly work and favor and serve and have compassion. For one lacks all and needs (tunc virtutes exercendae).

But in the fruition of Love, one has become God (dii estis), mighty and righteous. And then are will and work and might equally righteous. These are the three Persons in one God. This was forbidden me — four years ago, on Ascension-feast — by God the Father himself, in the time that his Son had come to the altar. By that coming I was kissed by him, and to that token I was shown by him, and one with him before his Father (accepit eam pro filio et e contrario). There he took me over himself, and me over him. And in that singleness in which I was then taken in and clarified, I understood this wesen, and knew it more clearly than one can by speaking, or by reasoning, or by seeing — any matter that is so knowable in the earth one may know. Yet this seems a wonder. But though I say this seems a wonder, I know well that you do not wonder, for heavenly reason cannot earth understand. For of all that is in earth, one may find reason and dietsch (Dutch) enough — but for this I know no dietsch and no reason (non potest exprimi verbis). Though I know all reason of sinne as a human may.

All that I have said to you — that is no Dutch to it. For nothing fits to it that I know. Although I forbid you some of the works and command the others — you shall yet much have to serve. But the singular of what I have said to you, I forbid you henceforth, as it is forbidden me in the will of God. But you must still labor in the works of Love, as I long did and his friends did and still do, and as I in part for a while have done, and still at all times do — to undertake nothing but Love, to work nothing but Love (nil intromittite nisi amorem), to shelter nothing but Love, to support nothing but Love. How you shall do and leave each — may God show you, our Beloved. Amen.

Letter XVIII

XVIII. The Definition of the Soul; the Two Eyes of Caritas

Ay sweet dear child, be wise in God (prudentia), for wisdom is a great need to you, and to each person who would become godly. For wisdom leads very deeply into God. But it is now a time when almost no one will know his debt, nor can — in the debt of service and of Love. Ay, you have much to do, if you shall live to God and to the human, and grow up after the fittingness of that worthiness in which you are loved by God and meant.

Set yourself wisely and mightily in all that is yours (mores secundum nobilitatem tuam), as one un-cowed, and in all your manners after your free nobility. He who is rich above all rich and mighty, he gives them all enough by his mightiness and by his favor (onst) — not by his pains (non secundum labores), nor by his bringing, nor by his gifts with the hand. But his rich mightiness and his mighty messengers — those are his complete virtues, which serve him and order his kingdom and give them all what they need, after honor and after fitting of him who is Lord thereof.

And they give each according as he is born and according to his office. Mercy gives to all idle people who are purely poor in all the manners in which they are caught by un-virtues (misericordia dat pauperibus), by which they have remained honor-less and good-less. Caritas guards the commonweal of the kingdom (caritas dat) and gives each what he needs. Wisdom adorns (sapientia) all the noble knights who with great war and with strong storm labor in burning longing with noble Love. Perfection (perfectio) gives the cousins their land-property rich, like the mighty lordship of the mighty souls of which I speak, who with mighty complete will and with complete works have their noble usage with all the will of Love.

These four virtues shall righteousness give and judge and bless. By this the Emperor himself remains free and in peace (imperator committit), because he commands the offices to hold the right, and assigns the kings and the dukes and the counts and the foremost cousins with the high fief of his riches and with the worthy right of Love, which is the crown of the rich soul (corona animae) who can help each according to his need, and yet not undertake herself thereof except with the Love of her Beloved (amor non intromittit).

This is what I meant, when I last wrote you the three virtues: to have compassion on all (in secundo folio precedente), and not to take into your protection, and the others I said to you. Thus earnestly preserve your noble completeness of your worthy complete soul. And mark her sinne. Thus wholly hold yourself from all undertaking (sic integrum te tene, nihil intromittere) of good and of evil, of high and of low, and let all be; and be free to exercise your Beloved, and to be enough to him whom you love in Love. This is your right debt, which you owe God of your right wesen — and them with whom you are with him: thus singly to love God, and to undertake nothing but the single Love, who has chosen us for herself.

Now understand the inwardness of your soul — what is soul. Soul is a being that is visible to God, and God to her in turn (quid est anima). Soul is also a being that wills to be enough to God, and holds right lordship of being where she is not to fall by strange things which are less than the soul's worthiness (anima inquinata). Where it is thus, there the soul is a groundlessness,⁶ with which God is himself enough (deus in anima), and his contentment of himself always full has in her, and she in turn always in him.

Soul is a way of the passing-through of God in his freedom of his deepest. And God is a way of the passing-through of the soul in her freedom — that is in his ground, which cannot be reached except that she reach it with her depth. And unless God be wholly hers, he would not be enough for her.

The sight that is naturally created in the soul is caritas. This sight has two eyes (ratio sic Deum videt): that is Love and Reason. Reason cannot see God except in what he is not. Love rests not save in what he is. Reason has her free paths, by which she walks. Love feels lacking; yet lacking forwards her more than Reason. Reason forwards in the thing which God is, by the thing which God is not. Love sets aside the thing which God is not, and rejoices where she lacks in the thing which God is.

Reason has more contentment than Love, but Love has more sweetness of blessedness than Reason. Yet these two help one another very greatly. For Reason teaches Love, and Love illumines Reason (ratio docet, amor illuminat). When Reason then falls into the longing of Love, and lets her love drive her and bind herself to the stake of Reason, then they may a very great work (ratio et amor magnum).

This no one may learn except by feeling; for wisdom does not mingle herself thereto — to that wondrous zealous desire and to that groundless to be examined, which is hidden from all wesene, without fruition of Love. In this joy may not be mingled the strangers (mundus non accipit sed anima), nor anyone strange — only the soul who is motherly-suckled in the joy of the over-flowing of the great Love, and disciplined with the rod of the Father's mercy, and hangs inseparably on God, and reads from his face her judgments. And remains by this in peace (imo in pace).

But when this high soul turns again to people and to human things, she brings a countenance so joyful and so wonderfully sweet from the oil of caritas, that she in all things she wills turns toward men with goodness. And from the truth-bearing and from righteousness of the judgments she has received in the face of God, so she seems to the un-noble people fearful and unheard-of (talibus perversa). And when the un-noble people then see that all the soul's things are set after truth and ordered in all ways, however eyselec and however fearful she is to them, they must yield to her by Love.

And those who are chosen to such wesene in the singleness of Love, and yet not full-grown thereto — they have the might in their mightiness of eternity. But it is unknown to them, and to others. Thus secretly Reason illumines (illuminatio veritatis). This sight of the soul illumines the soul in all truth of the will of God. For he who reads his judgments from the face of God works in all reason after the truth of the manners of Love. The manner of Love is to be obedient (mores amoris obedientia). That is the contrary of many strange manners. And he must work outside the work of each according to the worthiness of mighty Love, who holds her commandment after truth. He is to no one subject but to Love alone (nulli obediens), who has seized him with Love.

Whoever would have spoken anything otherwise, he speaks after Love's will and serves and works Love's works after her will (facit semper opera amoris secundum judicia lecta), night and day in all freedom, without waiting, without dread and without sparing, after the judgments he has read from Love's face — which remain hidden from all those who give up Love's work for strange wesene and strange things, because they are not believed under the strangers, who rather have, and think it better right, their own will wrought than Love's. For they have not come into that great face of mighty Love, by which one must freely live in all kinds of pain. And this freedom shall you know (eos cognoscite), and serve thereof, shall you know.

The people make many a counsel by themselves, by which they despise Love's works — under the likeness of great freedom; and they also do it for great wisdom. And some give commandments thereagainst, to leave Love's commandments. But the noble who would hold his rule (qui sic regulas tenet) — after as enlightened Reason teaches him — he dreads not the strangers' commandment, nor their counsel, whatever torment may come to him: from rumors, from shames, from complaints, from words, from forsakings, from companies, from homelessness, from nakedness, from all lack which the human should bear in all manners. That he dreads not — to be hated for evil, nor to be hated for good. He wills to be always ready after obedience of Love in all that she wills, and to practice in all things after truth, and through all torment-some works in the joy of his heart with all the might of Love.

Thus shall you with whole life so strongly stare upon God with the sweet eyes of single affection, which always practices the Beloved after her contentment. That is, you shall so heartily — yes, much more than heartily — look upon your dear God, that your bent eyes of your longing remain hanging in the face of your Beloved with the going-through nails of the burning touching (claves quibus Deus transfigitur), which do not cease. Then first may you rest with St John, who slept upon Jesus's breast (Johannes super Christi pectus requievit) — and so do those who serve in freedom of Love: they rest upon that sweet wise breast and see and hear the secret words which are over-fulsome and unheard-of to the people, through the sweet whispering (ita fortiter vide) of the Holy Ghost.

You shall always strongly look upon your Beloved that you long for, for he who stares at what he longs for is kindlingly enkindled (accenditur qui desideratum videt), so that his heart in him begins to fail of the sweet burden of Love. And he is drawn-into by the steadiness of that good life of contemplation, with which one always stares upon God. So that Love always lets herself taste so sweet to him, that he forgets (imo obliviscitur) all that is in earth, and considers what the strangers do to him: that he would a hundred thousand times renounce himself, before he would let himself fall short of one point of the working of the service of worthy Love, whereof Christ is the foundation.

Letter XIX

XIX. I Love My Beloved and My Beloved Me (verse-letter)

God be with you, and give you also³ right knowledge of the manners of Love, and make you know what they are. I love my Beloved and my Beloved me (ego dilectum amo), as the Bride says in the Canticles. Whoever would yield to Love enough, he would yet conquer Love wholly. I hope it shall yet be; though it is a piece too long for us, we know all the thanks of Love.

Whoever would taste of right Love — be it in wandering, be it in attaining — he shall hold neither path nor way, who shall wander after Love's victory, both in mountain and in valley. By strange comforts, in pain, in trouble, outside all the way of human sinne,⁵ the strong horse of Love bears him.

For Reason cannot grasp how Love sees through Love-the-Beloved, and how Love in all things lives free, yes, as she has come to freedom — the freedom that Love can give: she spares neither death nor life. She wills all, Love; she wills not less. I leave the rhyme here out of sinne.

For by no sinne can one bring out the matter of Love, of which I mean to you and will; I say nothing else; for this one must speak with the soul. Our matter is too wide, for we take Love who is God himself by nature. Truth-bearing Love never had matter. She is without matter, with the rich freedom of God, always giving in riches, and working with fierheit, and growing in nobilities.

Ay — must you grow up after your worthiness, in which you are admonished by God without beginning — how could you bear that God has fruition of you with his nature and you not of him? How this becomes me, of that I must keep silent — for what you have, you read; as you would, I shall be silent. May God work after his fitting. I may say as Jeremiah said: Lord, you have deceived me, and I am gladly deceived by you (Jeremias: decepisti me).

The soul which is most untouched (ongherijnlec) is the most like to God. Hold yourself un-touched of all people in heaven and in earth, until the day that God is exalted from the earth (omnia trahat) and that he may draw all things with him to him. Some say that he meant on the cross, on which he was exalted; but when God and the blessed soul are one, then is he with the blessed soul most fairly exalted from the earth. For when there is nothing else to her than God, and she keeps no will but to live his only will (anima nihil vult sed voluntate), and the soul becomes nothing, and with his will wills all that he wills, and is swallowed up into him, and become nothing — then he is exalted from the earth (tunc exaltatus), and then he draws all things to him, and then she becomes with him all that-same which he is.

The swallowed-up souls that are thus lost in him receive in Love their souls half (accipiunt dimidiam animarum), as the moon receives her light from the sun. The single knowledge they then bring of that new light from where they come and where they dwell — so the single light catches the other, and so the two half-souls become one, and so it is time.⁷ Had you waited for this light to choose your Beloved, you could be free (vestita anima), for with that single light, with which God himself clothes himself, you would be gathered and clothed.

How these two half-souls become one — much belongs thereto. I dare say no more, for my misfortune is too great for Love, and also because the strangers would plant nettles where the roses should stand. Thus we leave it. Now, God be with you.

¹ The Five Prohibitions in verse form. The opening line Te alre doghtet wes onstech ende snel uses the adjectival form of onst (see footnote 2) — onstech, "favoring/gracious-of-onst" — which the project preserves italicized to mark the anchor. Each line of the original Middle Dutch is in rhyming couplet structure (here loosely rendered to preserve the doctrinal sense). The five together constitute Hadewijch's most-cited compressed pastoral teaching: to every virtue be onst-full and quick — undertake nothing else — lack in no thing — work in no singular thing — to every need have favor and compassion — and take nothing into your own protection.

² onst — gracious favor, well-meaning gift. Distinct from gratie (grace as theological category) and from caritas (the Pauline-Latin term). Onst is the courtly-medieval bestowal of one's good-will on another; in Hadewijch's appropriation it names the disposition the soul takes toward all those in need.

³ Letter XIX opens directly in verse in Vercoullie's 1895 Middle Dutch; the rhymed-couplet form is preserved here in loose English imitation. Hadewijch sometimes writes prose-poetry hybrids in the Brieven (compare also the opening lines of Letter XXX, also rhymed couplets).

⁴ lijm — the adhesive (birdlime/glue), not the citrus fruit nor the calcium mineral nor the tree. The band of lime is the figure of bonding-substance: the glue that makes two-into-one. The image is paired in Letter XXII (Section VIII) with the Latin viscus haesionis — "glue of cleaving."

⁵ sinne — the integrated faculty of understanding-feeling-willing-together. Preserved untranslated per the project's glossary anchor; never rendered "modern senses" (sensory perception). The first occurrence in this Section is here in Letter XIX's verse line. The same term recurs in the prose continuation below ("I leave the rhyme here out of sinne"; "by no sinne can one bring out the matter of Love").

⁶ grondeloesheit — Middle Dutch noun-of-quality, "groundlessness" / "bottomlessness." Rendered earlier as "groundless ground" the term would echo the Eckhartian grundloser Grund (c. 1290s onward), which post-dates Hadewijch by half a century. The translation holds grondeloesheit as a bottomless-deep quality of the soul where God is enough, without importing the later Rhineland-mystical grunt-vocabulary.

⁷ soe eest tijt — Hadewijch's recurring eschatological-due-time formula (compare Letters II die tijt es cort, X tijt comt). It signals the kairos, the right hour of the union, not a narrative "meanwhile."

⁸ Therewith he swallowed up his Father. Hadewijch's signature Trinitarian paradox: the Son's refusal-to-shelter (the fourth prohibition) is so total that it swallows up — overtops, eclipses — even the Father's mighty work. The image returns in the moon/sun figure of Letter XIX (the swallowed-up souls of the next Section), and in Letter XXII's four-fold doctrine where the Son pours twice (born Jesus, baptized Christ) and the Father is bowed down.

JSON: /api/sources/beguine-mystics/hadewijch-brieven/vol-7-01-letters-16-19.json