Greco-Christian stream·Beguine Mystics·The Visions of Hadewijch·Section II

Section II

This is Section II of the project translation of Hadewijch's Visioenen. Three visions in scope, all of them composed on liturgical high-days:

• Vision 2 — on Whitsunday (Pentecost): Hadewijch receives the Holy Ghost so completely that she understands the will of Love in all things, and the gift of tongues in seventy-two languages.
• Vision 3 — on Easter Day: led into the face of the Holy Ghost, who has the Father and the Son in one being. A voice from the face declares: See here, old one, you who have called upon me and sought what and who I am, Love, a thousand years before man was born. The voice gives Hadewijch her commission: she shall live what Love is, until the death by which she shall come to live; and then she shall be Love, and shall enjoy who Love is.
• Vision 4 — on a May Day (Saint James's Mass): the great apocalyptic two kingdoms vision. Two kingdoms of like wealth, like generation, like power — into which Hadewijch is drawn by a burning angel who, opening his wings, sounds seven thunder-strokes: moon, sun, stars, paradise, throne, all the holy, all the heavens, are summoned in turn. The angel asks Hadewijch to choose the mightier of the two kingdoms. The two kingdoms are then revealed as the two manhoods — Hadewijch's and Christ's — and the angel as Christ-the-Beloved.

The same conventions apply as Section I: light modernization with archaic verb endings and pronouns normalized; Hadewijch's technical vocabulary preserved (Minne = Love, capitalized when personified; the soul's progression from bearing-love to feeling-love to being-love; orewoet preserved untranslated in italics where it appears); formal LLM-as-judge review deferred per session-budget, consistent with Section I.

Vision 2 — Pentecost: the gift of tongues

It was on a Whitsunday¹ that I received the Holy Ghost in such a way that I understood the whole will of Love in all things; and all the ways of the will of the heavens and of the heavenly ones; and all the perfection of the perfect righteousness; and all the defects of the lost; and all the wills of those whom I saw, in what they were of truth and of lies. And ever since, I have felt the love of all those whom I saw, in just as many ways as they were. And then I understood all the speech that men speak in seventy-two manners.²

The manifoldness of all these beings is hidden from me, and silenced. But to stare singularly upon him, and the burningness of love, and the truth of his will — these never were quenched in me, nor silenced, nor died down, ever since.

Before that time, I had always wished to know, in all my doing — I pondered and ever said: What is Love, and who is Love? In doing this I had been two years.

Vision 3 — Easter: the face of the Holy Ghost

After that, on an Easter Day, I had gone to God; and he embraced my senses from within, and took me into the spirit, and led me into the face of the Holy Ghost — who has the Father and the Son in one being. Out of that whole being of the face I received all understanding; and so I read all my judgments. And a voice from out of that face sounded so fearsome that it was heard over all. And it said to me:

See here, old one,³ who have called upon me and sought what and who I am — Love — a thousand years before the birth of man. See, and receive my Spirit: of all knowing of what I am in Love.

And when you bring me to yourself a pure human being⁴ — in myself — through all the ways of full love, then you shall enjoy of me who I am in Love. Until that day, you shall love what I am in Love. And then you shall be Love, even as I am Love. And you shall live nothing less than that I am Love, in your days, until the death which you shall come to live. With my oneness you received me, and I have received you. Go and live what I am, and come again and bring me whole Godhead, and enjoy who I am.

And then I came again into myself, and understood all that I previously said; and I remained staring at my heartily sweet Beloved.

Vision 4 — The Two Kingdoms

I sat on a May Day, and was to hear the Mass of Saint James,⁵ as was right, for that was his day. Then within the Epistle my senses were drawn inward, with a great stormful gaze of a dreadful spirit which drew me from within into the inwardness of me. From within me I was then drawn up wholly into the spirit.

Then was shown to me a strange likeness: two kingdoms, of one wealth, and of one generation, and of one lineage, and of like power in all dominion. And then there came an angel, burning, all kindled with kindling fire; and he opened his wings wide, and with them gave seven great strokes — like a herald who would still all to his voice, that his will might be heard. With the first stroke, the moon stood still from her course, at the stillness which was there commanded. With the second stroke, the sun let go his course at that stillness. With the third stroke, all the stars stayed in their course. With the fourth stroke, those of paradise were awakened from their rest, to wonder upon this with new reason. With the fifth stroke, the throne stood still from his course. With the sixth stroke, all the holy ones of the holy were revealed — of holy people, the living and the dead, all who are in heaven, and in purgatory, and on earth, each according to what he shall wholly be in all. With the seventh stroke, all the heavens of each heaven's kingdom were opened in everlasting glory.

When the angel had thus struck with his wings, and had made stillness, then he gave a voice — like a thunder, like a mighty trumpet — by which one commands the highest commandment. And then he said: All you stilled ones who serve, and all you revealed ones whom they serve thereby — be my witness here, of what I now show, of this wondrous one and this dreadful one of you who here stands.

Then was I, in that hour, embraced in his wings, and into the middle of his kingdom — which he himself was. Then he said to me: You unknown to all your kindred and to all your adversaries, beloved ever as myself: now choose, of these two heavens, which you saw as kingdoms.

And then I fell into him as one embraced with a sweet new faith; and that was full of knowing with the taste of righteous love. In that through-going taste of sweet love he said to me: Pure one with whole faith, who shall everlastingly make all things new — taste, and know yourself, what these heavens have unlike, and choose the richest and the mightiest.

And I said: Lord, I know them all. For you, with your perfectness, have done away all my lowness by which I doubted. And then I saw one, of whom the one heaven was — and my Beloved, of the other heaven — each in his heaven, of even might, in like service, and in all like glory, and in an equally worthy mightiness, and in equally bearable mercifulness, in all eternal being.

And all that were stilled from their course (moon, sun, stars, throne), and all that were revealed for the witness (paradise, the holy ones, and all the heavens that serve them), said: Amen. And they witnessed the oneness of the two of them. And leave is given to all of them to be in their being where they were before.

Then the angel said again to me: Now see me one with your Beloved; and you, my beloved, are loved with me. These whole heavens which you see are hers and mine. And those you saw as two kingdoms, which were laid waste, that was the manhood of us two before it was fully grown.⁶ I grew first, and yet we remained even. And I came into my kingdom yesterday, and you grew after; and yet we remained even. And she shall be fully grown today, and come with you tomorrow into her kingdom; and yet she shall remain even with me.

You have wished to know, dear strong-great Lady, by your doubt, for what cause this should be, and with what work she should be fully grown like to me, that I should be like to her, and you like to myself — that she be in me, and that she be made known to you from my mouth. This is the understanding of my rich nature.

Her first great work, by which she shall be fully grown, is this: that she shall work all the virtues that are shown to her of my being, in scriptures, in counsels, in the taste of love between her and me; by the commandment that you have to her of the bond of love, and by the wide knowing that you have of my will of fruition.⁷

Her second great work shall be a wretched being, and an unsteady time, of the great virtues that we have loved in her — and that she shall work it most-like, with great storming.

Her third work, and her yet greater virtue, shall be her many incoming despondencies at all hours that shall say to her: "What does God mean? What does this lady mean? What shall it be? How may it happen that I should fully grow like to him, and like to her, after the worthiness of them both, enough to be to them?" She knows me perfect God; and she shall will to know you the most perfect human being who lives by all the like virtue after my ways — the dread and the pain: how she should so satisfy us with so defective ways as are hers, and her oversweet haste with earnest desire that she would forever be it without fail, whatever it cost; and then again falling into misdeeds which condemn her and bring her to despair — she who would so gladly remain noble and without spot after the likeness of both of us — and feeling herself outside that, with all her judgments. Now taste yourself: what could she more do, perfect?

Her fourth work — and the very greatest, which she in us shall fulfill — that is the lacking of our sweet nature, which those like to us feel from others; and the knowing and the tasting that we in ourselves have two-fold of her, and she, unfully-grown, must do without it — which she must love above all — and as all darkness has on it: that shall be her work, by which she shall satisfy us, and tomorrow fulfill herself.

Translator's footnotes (project translation)

¹ Whitsunday — Pentecost Sunday. Vision 1 fell on the octave of Pentecost (Trinity Sunday, the next Sunday). Vision 2 falls one week earlier, on Pentecost itself. The two visions are paired by the liturgical year — the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost (Vision 2) and the revelation of the Trinity at the octave (Vision 1) — which sets up the year-long sequence of liturgical-feast visions that follows.

² Seventy-two manners. The gift of tongues, in the medieval calculation of seventy-two languages — corresponding to the seventy-two disciples sent out two-by-two in Luke 10. (Acts 2 names the gift at the disciples-of-120 number; the seventy-two count derives from Luke 10.) Van Mierlo's apparatus connects this to Thomas of Cantimpré's Vita of Lutgard, where Thomas records "I have seen one who from the hour of terce to vespers on Pentecost day had the knowledge of all tongues. But I will not yet disclose her, because she is still living." Van Mierlo argues this una is Hadewijch herself.

³ Old one. Hadewijch's Middle Dutch oude — a term of intimacy and election, not of age. The voice greets her as one who has been seeking who and what Love is "a thousand years before the birth of man" — the pre-temporal election of the soul, the same exemplarist claim Marguerite Porete will make later (cf. Mirror Section VII, ch. II: was I loved of them already without beginning).

⁴ Pure human being — suuer mensche. Hadewijch's term for the Christ-pattern of full humanity assumed; cf. Section I, Vision 1, where Christ says of himself I lived a pure human being. The Soul is called to bring Christ to herself as a pure human being, so that she may enjoy who Love is.

⁵ May Day, the Mass of Saint James. The feast of St James the Less, May 1 in the medieval calendar; Vision 4 dates itself liturgically as Vision 2 did. Hadewijch sits to hear the Epistle of the Mass; in that very moment her senses are drawn inward.

⁶ The two kingdoms are the two manhoods. The great Christological-anthropological move of Vision 4: the two kingdoms of like wealth and like power are revealed as the manhood of Christ and the manhood of Hadewijch — the vrouwe (lady, mistress) of the chapter. They are of like generation and like lineage because the Beloved (Christ) and the beloved (the soul) share in one humanity through the Incarnation. Christ-the-Beloved grew first into his kingdom (the Ascension); Hadewijch grows after; tomorrow she will come into her kingdom; yet they remain even.

⁷ The four works. Christ-the-Beloved closes the vision by naming the four progressive works by which Hadewijch's manhood will be fully grown like to his: (1) consolation — the affective consolation of the Spirit in the practice of virtue (Latin marginalia: consolatio); (2) contrarium — the contrary, the wretched being and unsteady time of inward storming; (3) desolatio — the great desolation of incoming despondencies in which the soul cannot satisfy God or the Lady; (4) opus carendi nostri — the work of lacking-us, the absence and darkness, in which the soul must do without the very fruition she most loves. The four-step pattern — consolation, contrariety, desolation, lacking — is one of the Mirror-precursors that Marguerite Porete will systematize into her seven states. Hadewijch is the original source. Note also that the opus carendi (lacking) is paired specifically with the line two-fold of her — Christ and the Father have two-fold knowledge and taste of her in themselves, but she has not yet received it back, and the darkness of her unfulfilled state is the opus.

JSON: /api/sources/beguine-mystics/hadewijch-visions/vol-2-01-visions-2-3-4.json