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

Section IX

Four Letters, three of them deeply personal and one structurally pastoral:

• Letter XXIV — I shall say to you without arrangement: do not let yourself be contented with anything but Love. Give Reason her time and mark always where she is too little or enough. The keep-Reason-awake doctrine; the non contradicas sed ambules (do not contradict, but walk on); the confessio triad (before God / before priest / before those offended); gape always at his heart's sweetness with a wretched sad heart. One of the most pastorally compressed Letters in the corpus.
• Letter XXV — the famous Sara letter. Greet me also Sara with the very same anything and nothing that I am (saluta etiam Saram). Hadewijch addresses a third party (Emme) about her own pain at being forgotten by Sara — the rare autobiographical glimpse of Hadewijch's specific relationships with named third parties. Closes with the Augustine-sermon episode: Once I heard a sermon spoken about Saint Augustine; in the hour I heard that, I became so kindled within, that I thought all that was in the earth would have burnt by the flame I felt in me. Love is all. (De Augustino sermone).
• Letter XXVI — a sorrowful Letter on absence and the impossibility of mutual fruition. Ay, our misery may be more — and the lack of our misery of Love — that we cannot have fruition of one another, nor of him. The famous closing Vaertwel ende levet scone — God si met u (Farewell and live well — God be with you).
• Letter XXVII — the hidden ways of Love. May God make known to you all the hidden ways which you owe to give and to live in truth-bearing Love. The careful enumeration of what Love does between lover and Beloved: helsen (embracing), cussen (kissing), enecheiden (singleness), bekinnessen (recognizing), nemen (taking), ghevene (giving), oetmoedecheiden (humilities), onderlinghe groetene (mutual greeting), ghenadeghen ontfane (gracious receiving). The most-articulated single anatomical-analysis of Love's working between two persons in the corpus.

Same conventions as Sections I-VIII. Minne → Love; fanglinge / cussen → embracing / kissing; enecheit → singleness; ellendecheit → misery, wretchedness; gheveinst / ongheveinst → feigned / unfeigned. The Sara letter's address-list (Sara, Emme, Margaret) is preserved with editorial notes — these are the most-named third parties in the Hadewijch corpus.

Letter XXIV

XXIV. Reason — Do Not Let Yourself Be Contented with Anything but Love

I shall say to you without arrangement: Do not let yourself be contented with anything but Love. Give Reason her time, and mark always where you are with her — too little or enough. And do not console yourself with any enjoyment by which you should lose your Reason — the Reason I mean, that is, that you shall always hold your knowing awake in discernment (de ratione vigilate).

You shall not let it weary you to serve, for any hour, small or great, the sick or the healthy. And the sicker they were, and the fewer friends they had, the sooner you should serve them. And the strangers always bear gladly (non contradicas sed ambules). And all who lie to you — do not contradict them. And all who despise you — desire to walk with them, for they free up for you the way of Love.

By anger of mind lack nothing (no one). By anger of mind leave no wisdom unasked, that you do not know — nor anything from shame, that you do not know. For you are bound by God to know all the virtue you can learn — by labor, by asking, by studying, with earnestness.

And when you have done wrong to anyone by your debt — do not wait long (si frater tuus); better it at once toward him. You owe this to the death of our Lord, to be enough to him. Where you might soonest and best bring him into peace, do that: to fall at his feet, and speak peace-words back, or to make peace back. That you shall not leave for anger nor for harm nor for shame. If you would gain God to be your Beloved and your Bridegroom, would you leave that by pride, you should come into many evil points by it. Do not hold to any thing so stiffly that God's grace may be cut off from you by it (nihil per superbiam).

By pride spare no service. By pride do not avoid giving small gifts or poor ones. By pride do not let any matter be unasked that you need and cannot well do without. By pride do not be ashamed that you hunger or thirst, or are weary, or freeze, or have sickness that is not fair, or filth, or un-manners — for it is great honor and courtesy from without, that people confess their confusion (honor fateri confusiones). And it is great pride that one keeps it silent. And it is dishonor and shame that one can be brought forward to confess it more than one can confess oneself. And also it is to God our Beloved a false dissembling, and an unfitting faithlessness. For that is the right of high fidelity and Love, that the Beloved be uncovered to the Beloved in all that he is, low and high.

Therefore I say to you: all that you fail in before God alone — for that you shall give yourself confused before him, so that you shall so lovingly recognize it before him (confessio coram Deo), and with knowledge complain before him, that he shall have heard the complaint and forgiven the misdeed, and bestowed grace upon it, before you come before the priest to confess (confessio coram sacerdote; confessio coram offensis). All that you misdo before people — that confession openly. What you misdo only in heart, confess that — as I said to you before — between you and God in confession.

With your eyes you shall look upon God simply, without more, and purely (aspice Deum), never to look upon any other thing (nemmer plus), nor to take other comfort (consolare) than in him. Memorially you shall bear God of heart, and lovingly embrace him with loving open hopeful heart, and gape always toward his heart's sweetness and toward the heartiness of his heartfelt sweet nature.

Therefore do all and leave all — when you hold yourself from without thus fairly after the law and complete as it belongs. And all that you can do without — do without; and your need, take it sparingly of all things. Be so humble from without that God shall have nothing to say to you, and be then from within so free, and always reaching after himself, with a wretched sad heart. And beg strongly of his loving sweet heart and of his strong Love, that she give you to love her, and that he may know how a young heart may do without Love. For he is god of Love and knows well the need of Love. For he then knows the manners of Love well — hold yourself so pure, as I have said to you. How may God hold himself from you, who is so sweet, and who so deeply falls in and who falls all through, where one gapes toward him (aperi os).

And always cry within without forgetting upon your hearty Beloved: Almighty and rich of all gifts — do not leave me, great God, so poor of you (collocutio cum Deo). Of all that you begin or work — say to him earnestly, that you do not wish to part from it idly without fruit. Of any service do not want thanks nor reward, but of all things and in all things take himself humbly. And of all creatures you shall take God, but of no one shall you receive him except out of the wholeness of his single nature, always to exercise lovingly. For his sweet name made all people fit in the ear of the rational soul. And all the words that you hear of him in the Scripture, and that you yourself read, and that I have said to you, and that anyone says to you in dietsch or in Latin — let them go into your heart, and mark and aspire to live after his worthiness.

Thus exercise yourself in all that I have said to you. For one cannot teach anyone to love (nullus potest docere amare sed opera ducunt ad amorem) — but these virtues lead the person to Love. God give you success to overcome this. Amen.

Letter XXV

XXV. The Sara Letter; the Augustine Sermon

Greet me also Sara with the very same anything and nothing that I am.¹ That I could fulfill for her the full-being in which she is loved — that I would gladly do for her; and I shall yet fulfill it to her, however she so kills me. She has so over-greatly forgotten my misery, and I do not wish to remind her of it nor to reproach her — since Love releases her from being admonished — Love who should at all hours hold her in new press, and busy with her noble Beloved. Now, since she has other busyness, and may endure and bear my heart's grief — so let me wander.

Yet know well that she should be the cause of my recreation in this life of misery, and there in fruition. There she shall yet be well, although she lets me now wander astray. And you who can perform more of me than anyone who now lives, after Sara — Emme, and you, who are to me altogether one.² You also turn yourselves too little to Love, who has so fearfully embraced me in the stirring of un-kissed Love. My heart, nor my soul, nor my senses rest day nor night nor hour; the flame burns at all hours in the marrow of my soul.

Say to Margaret³: that she guard herself against pridefulness, and that she wise herself, and that she may catch hold of God each day, and that she draw herself toward perfection, and ready herself to dwell with us where we shall gather, and that she not dwell with the strangers, nor remain. That would be great faithlessness — were she to leave us, however gladly she would do us love, and now is with us, and is so sorely, and so sorely as I, who long with us.

Once I heard a sermon, in which one spoke of Saint Augustine. At the hour that I heard that, I became so kindled within, that it was to my mind, that all that was in the earth should have burnt by the flame which I felt in me (de Augustino sermone). Love is all.

Letter XXVI

XXVI. Farewell — Live Well

In God be my greeting and fidelity completely sent to you from me and bidden by me; and that, at all hours admonished in truth-bearing Love, you live the truth and the completeness — to be enough to God, and to advance love and honor and right in him first, and after that in the good who are loved by him and he by them, and to give them all needs in whatever manners they are.

This I admonish you always to do, and have done ever since I dwelt by you. For that is the best work and the most chaste that I know toward God. That the Scripture shows you — it is well true. And above all, remember the single Love which I love and mean, although I cannot give her enough.

Ay feel and understand how gladly I would see it, and that you also did it. And feel also and taste how this woe makes me — that it is lacking. Our misery may be more — and the lack of our misery of Love — that we cannot have fruition of one another, nor of him. I will that you live, to grow up in your completeness. But I, the unblessed who with Love long it of you all — who would be to me the recreation in my pain and solace of my sad misery and peace and sweetness — and I wander alone, and must remain absent from him whose I am above all that I am, and to whom I would so gladly be complete Love.

And God knows, you have fruition of all, and I want all in which my soul would rest in him. Ay, why does he let me so greatly serve him and have fruition of him and of his — and withhold me then from him and from his? Vaertwel ende levet scone. God si met u — Farewell and live well. God be with you.

Letter XXVII

XXVII. The Hidden Ways of Love

God be with you, and make known to you all the hidden ways which you owe to give and to live in truth-bearing Love — so that he may make known to you the countless great sweetness of his heartfelt sweet nature, which is so deep, and so groundless, that he is, of wonder and of unknowing, deeper and darker than the abyss.

God give you to know yourself in all that you have need of. So may you come into that knowledge of the high Love which he himself is, our great God. Give yourself subject all-humble to all things, and to take from no thing self-exaltation. And mark your littleness and his greatness, your baseness and his height, your blindness and his clear seeing through all — and that he sees all through, heavenly and earthly, and the abyss-grounds and the hidden depths.

And when you remember the completeness of himself — how he is to himself fully enough in Love and in glory — and when you see that you are so wretched in all the exercises of Love which the Beloved shall receive from the Beloved: in embracing, in kissing, in singleness, in recognizing, in taking, in giving, in humilities, in mutual greeting, in gracious receiving — and that the Beloved may so little hide from the Beloved — and you are yet so concealed from him and so hidden, whether he be in Love to you or not: ay, these matters may well make you humble. For you do not know on what to exalt yourself, when you remember the great dark misery I have told you of, which yet is three-fold greater than I shall say to you. That is true; I confess it well. I would say to you one piece more thereto than I do — but you have so little failing, that you do not know what is laid thereto and is lacking, and what the sweetness is that Beloved has of Beloved.

That I say of kissing of Beloved — that is to be made-one with him beyond all things, and to receive no enjoyment but to receive that which in enjoyments of singleness within him one receives. That embracing is his sustaining from fair trust to him with unfeigned caritas (ongheveinst). This is the embracing and kissing of Beloved in Reason. But in the feeling-from-within and in the fruition of the Beloved that is there of sweetness — that all could not fully tell, who ever received human form. But one might say to you much more off (afsegghen), if one ought.

This I leave thus. But know now this fruition — that you have not from God who has loved you what you would rightly have of him, were he loved by you above all, as he is bound to be loved. Loved you him thus, and were you his Beloved, then you would have all the countless overflowing wonders of him, which I have touched on. That you now know that you are this, and he is that, and you by your lowness must remain wanting it — for this you need to humble yourself above all and not exalt. These are the inward matters wherefore one shall be humble.

¹ MDu Groet mi oec saren — "Greet me also Sara." The Vercoullie 1895 marginal Latin gloss at this line reads simply sara (the name); fuller reconstructions such as Saluta etiam Saram are editorial supplements beyond the 1895 marginal. This is the most-discussed personal-address line in Hadewijch's corpus. Sara is most plausibly the Sara who appears in the Lijst der volmaakten (List of the Perfected) at the close of Vision 13 — the Sara een joedinne ende waert nonne tutewerke (Sara a Jewish woman who became a nun at Etterbeek). The Sara of Letter XXV has hurt Hadewijch by some forgetting or breach; the Letter's compressed grief is the most-personal moment in the Brieven.

Note on Latin marginal glosses. Bracketed or italicized Latin tags within the English text of these Letters (e.g. si frater tuus, aspice deum, aperi os, consolare, honor fateri confusiones, confessio coram deo, de Augustino sermone) are the 1895 Vercoullie source-edition's marginal Latin glosses, preserved here as textual apparatus; they are not Hadewijch's own Latin.

² Emme — the addressee of the Letter; one of Hadewijch's closer correspondents. Her name appears only here in the corpus.

³ Mergriete (Margaret) — the third named person of the Letter. Whether the historical Margaret who was Hadewijch's disciple, or a separate Margaret, the name appears repeatedly in the Brieven's late passages as a younger Beguine under Hadewijch's direction.

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