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

Section III

Three visions in scope, on three liturgical feasts and one autobiographical date:

• Vision 5 — on Assumption Day, at Matins. Hadewijch is taken into the three uppermost heavens, which John the Evangelist saw only in likenesses. She intercedes for her companions who stray from Love; she protests that she is no Lucifer. The three highest heavens are revealed as the three Persons of the Trinity. A brief upraising into ineffable fruition follows.
• Vision 6 — on Epiphany (Three Kings' Day), the year Hadewijch turned nineteen. The supreme throne with the King wearing a crown above all crowns; an angel offers incense; the voice See who I am. Hadewijch sees in his face all faces, all destinies, the great heaven in his right hand, the sword and hell in his left, and the four paradoxes of divine attribute (length under all, smallness over all, hiddenness around all, wideness within all). She falls into the fruition-breast of his nature for half an hour.
• Vision 7 — on Pentecost, at Matins, in church. Hadewijch's most famous vision: the bridegroom-communion vision. In a state of orewoet — her body trembling, her veins straining — she desires to be united with the manhood of Christ. An eagle from the altar comes to her with the message: Whoever has come, comes again; and where he never came, there he comes not. Christ appears as a child (the boy of his first three years), then in the form of the man at the Last Supper, and gives Hadewijch his body from the ciborium and his blood from the chalice. He then takes her in his arms and presses her to himself, and all the limbs I had felt his in all their satisfaction. The vision closes with the soul melted into him in feeling, in such a way that nothing of myself remained to me.

Same conventions as previous Hadewijch sections. Judge deferred.

Vision 5 — The Three Highest Heavens (Assumption)

I was on Assumption Day at Matins, raised in the spirit a short while; and the three highest heavens were shown to me, of whom one names the three highest angels: the Thrones, the Cherubim, the Seraphim. And the eagle of the four animals — the sweet Saint John the Evangelist — came to me and said: Come and see the things that I, when a man, saw; you have seen them all opened, and whole, which I saw in likenesses; you have known them, and you know which they are.

And with the remembrance of the speech that Saint John had to me thereafter, I fell on my face with a great woe; and the woe cried out aloud: Ah, ah, holy and true mighty Friend, why do you leave our company in strange portions, and why do you not flow them through into our oneness? I have my whole will yet with you, and I love and hate with you as you do — for I am no more Lucifer¹ since you gave me again the assurance, as those do who now are Lucifer, who will that good and grace befall them who do not have it in living, nor in works, nor in service, and who will drive away their labor and enjoy grace, and exalt themselves because you show them one little of your goodness — these will have it as their due, and they fall from your heavenly honor. This you have made me know.

Here I formerly transgressed against living and against the dead, whom by my longing I wished to free as their due from purgatory and from hell. But for this be you blessed: you released four of them, without your wrath against me, from among the living and the dead who at that time belonged to hell. Your goodness bore with my un-knowing, and my unsettled longing, and the unbridled charity that you gave me in yourself toward men, when I did not yet know your perfect righteousness. In this I fell, and became Lucifer in this — that I did not know this. Yet I did not fall away in you. This was the one reason for which I fell among men, that I remained unknown to them and they cruel to me. I wished by love to keep the living and the dead out of all the lowness of despair, of misdoing — to lessen their pain, and to send hellish dead into purgatory, and to bring living hellish ones into the heavenly counsel. This your goodness bore with me, and showed me that I had so fallen among the people on this account. When you took me into your very self, and made me know what kind of one you are, and how you hate and love in one being — then it remained known to me how I should with you hate and love, and in all being be. By this that I know this, so I ask you: that you make our company whole with us.

And he who sat on the throne in heaven said to me: These three thrones are I, in three Persons: throne is human nature, cherub is the Holy Ghost, seraph is in my fruition where I am all. And he took me up out of the spirit into that highest fruition of wonder beyond reason — there I enjoyed of him as I shall eternally. The hour was short; and when I came again to myself, then he set me again in the spirit and said to me thus: As you enjoy of me now, you shall enjoy of me eternally. And John said to me: Go to your burden, and God shall renew his old wonders in you. And I came again into my pain with many great woes.

Vision 6 — Epiphany: the Supreme Throne

It was on an Epiphany day; then I was nineteen years old (so was I named there at that time). Then I wished to go to our Lord; and I was at that time in longings, and in over-strong asking how God takes and gives, in lostnesses-of-him, in takings-up of fruitions, those who are wholly his after his will. Then was I on that day strongly moved anew in love, and then I was raised up in a spirit, and led where there was shown to me a high mighty place, and on that mighty place stood a throne, and he who sat upon it was invisible and beyond understanding in the worthiness of the dominion that was to be exercised above. To possess such a place is unknown to heavenly and earthly. Above on that high sitting in the high place I saw a crown that was above all diadems; and its wideness had under it all things embraced, and outside that crown was nothing.

And an angel came with a glowing censer, glowing with fiery smoke, and he knelt before the highest place of the throne, where the crown hung above; and he did him honor therewith and said: O unknown might, and all-mighty great Lord, by this be there honor and worthiness to this lady, who seeks you in your hidden place — she who is unknown to all those who do not send you so kindled an offering with so sharp shafts as she sends you with a new burning youth, who under the people is called nineteen years. And she is the one, Lord, who comes to seek you in the spirit — who you are there, where men do not understand you. For that unknown life that you have founded in her in burning charity has led her here. Now reveal to her that you call her here, and lead her into yourself.

And there I heard a voice speak fearsomely to me, and unheard, by a likeness speaking to me, which said: See who I am.

And I saw him whom I sought; and his face revealed itself to me with such clarity that I knew there all faces and all forms that ever were and shall be — from whom he receives honor and service in all the just; and why each shall have his own in damnations and in benedictions; and why each shall be set in his place; and by what being some such stray from him there, and again come back to it more nobly and more beautifully than they held it before; and why some stray and do not come back; and how some always seem to stray and were never out of it for an hour, but have wholly stayed standing, and at all hours well-nigh without comfort; and some have remained in their place from childhood, and recognized it worthy, and held to it so to the end. All being I knew there in that face.

In his right hand I saw the gift of his benediction, and there within the great heaven opened, and all who shall in it be eternally with him. In his left hand I saw the sword of the fruitful stroke by which he slays all in death. There within I saw hell, and all her eternal company.

I saw his length under all pressed-down; I saw his smallness over all exalted; I saw his hiddenness flowing comprehensibly around all things; I saw his wideness within all enclosed.² I heard his reasoning, and I understood all reasoning with reasoning. I saw in his breast the whole fruition of his nature in love.

Of all the others that I saw, I stood in the spirit. But then I wondered of all that richness which I had seen in him; and by that wonder I came out of the spirit in which I had seen all that I sought; and when I thus in all that rich splendor knew my dread beloved and my unspeakable sweet, then I fell out of the spirit, of myself and of all that I had seen in him; and I fell all lost into the fruition-breast of his nature in love. There I remained swallowed-up-lost, beyond all understanding of else-aught to know, nor to see, nor to understand, except to be one with him and to enjoy of him. There I remained less than a half-hour.

Then I was again awakened in a spirit, and I knew again as before, and I understood all reasoning. And from him it was said to me: Hereafter you shall judge none, nor bless, beyond fitness from me; and you shall give to each according to his worth. Such am I in fruition, and in knowing, and in raptures, to those who are pleasing to me after my will. I lead you, God and man, back into the cruel world, where you shall taste of all death — that you here come back into the whole name of my fruition, wherein you are baptized in my deep. And with this I was again brought sorrowfully into myself.

Vision 7 — Pentecost: The Bridegroom-Communion Vision

On a Pentecost day, at daybreak, when Matins was being sung in the church, and I was there, my heart and my veins and all my limbs shook and trembled with longing. And it was to me, as it has often been, so wildly and so dreadfully in mood, that it seemed to me I was not enough for my Beloved, and my Beloved did not fulfill me, that, dying I should rage³, and raging die. Then was I, by longing love, so dreadful in mood and so wracked that all the limbs I had threatened singly to break, and all my veins were singly in labor. The longing in which I then was — it is ineffable to any reason, or to anyone whom I know. And what I myself might say of it would be unheard before all those who never knew Love by longing working, and those before whom Love was never known.

Thus I can say of it: I longed to enjoy my Beloved fully, and to know him and to taste him in all full fitness; his manhood in fruition with mine, and mine standing therein, and being strong to fall into un-failingness — that I might be enough to him in unfailingness: pure and unique and in all full fitness enough to suffer in each virtue. And for this I wished from within that he with his Godhead, in one spirit, should be enough to me, and be all that he is, without failing. For that gift I chose above all gifts I ever chose: that I should be enough in all great suffering. For that is the most perfect way to satisfy and to grow up into being God with God. For this is to suffer, and pain, and exile, and to be in great new trouble — and to let all this come and go without trouble, and to have no other taste of it than sweet love, embracing, and kissing. Thus I longed that God should be enough to me to be enough to him.

When I was thus dreadfully in mood, I saw an eagle come flying to me from the altar — a great one. And he said to me: Whoever would become one, let her prepare herself. And I stood up on my knees, and my heart bore itself terribly to adore singly, after his worthy worthiness — which yet, I knew well, would be unfit, God knows it, always to my woe and to my burden. And the eagle turned, saying: Righteous Lord and mighty one, now show your mighty power of your oneness, to be made one in fruition of yourself. And he turned back, and said to me: Whoever has come, comes again; and where he never came, there he comes not.

Then he came from the altar showing himself as a child⁴; and the child was of that same form as he was in his first three years; and he turned himself toward me, and took out of the ciborium his body in his right hand, and in his left hand he took a chalice that seemed coming from the altar, but I know not whence it came. With that he came in the form of the clothing and of the man that he was on that day when he first gave us his body — such a human being and a man, sweet and beautiful and a marvellous countenance showing, and so reverently to me coming as one who is wholly another's. Then he gave me himself in the species of the sacrament in figure as one is wont to give; and afterwards he gave me to drink from the chalice, form and taste as one is wont. Afterwards he himself came to me and took me wholly into his arms and pressed me to himself; and all the limbs I had felt his in all their satisfaction, after the desire of my heart, after my humanity. Then was I satisfied from without in all full fullness; and also I had then a short while strength to bear that.

But soon, in a short hour, I lost that beautiful man from outward sight in form; and I saw him become wholly nothing, and so utterly faint-becoming and all melted into one, so that I could not recognize him outside myself, and within myself not discern. To me it was at that hour as if we were one without difference.⁵

This was all from without in seeing, in tasting, in feeling, as one may taste of receiving in the sacrament from without, in seeing and in feeling from without — as the lover may be received by the lover in all full satisfactions of seeing and of hearing, of fervaerne⁶ the one in the other.

Afterwards I remained in a fervaerne into my Beloved, so that I wholly melted into him and nothing of myself remained to me. And I was changed, and taken up into the spirit, and there was shown to me of such an hour.

Translator's footnotes (project translation)

¹ I am no more Lucifer. Hadewijch's compressed Lucifer-doctrine: the sin of Lucifer is to exalt oneself on one's own merits — to claim as one's due (by living, work, service) what is in fact pure grace. The passage is theologically careful: she protests that her earlier intercessions for the damned (when she sought to liberate them as a matter of right rather than of God's mercy) were her own fall into Lucifer-likeness; God's goodness has now corrected her into the understanding that the will of God is both love and hate in one being. This becomes the basis for her later request that God unite her companions to her.

² The famous fourfold spatial paradox of the divine attributes — length under all, smallness over all, hiddenness around all, wideness within all. Van Mierlo's apparatus connects this to a long Patristic tradition (Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob 2.12: ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; Bonaventure, Itinerarium), and to Hadewijch's own Letter 20 where she returns to the same image with allegorical exposition.

³ Should rage — Middle Dutch verwoeden, the verbal form of orewoet / verwoetheit. Hadewijch's signature term, the divine love-frenzy that overcomes the senses. Vision 7's opening — all my limbs shook and trembled with longing, all my veins in labor — is the canonical orewoet description, and the source-passage from which Beatrice of Nazareth and the later Beguine tradition take the term.

⁴ Christ as a child of three years old. The Christological maximum of Vision 7: Christ comes from the altar first as the child (the form of his first three years — the years of fully-incarnate dependency on the Mother), then as the man of the Last Supper (the form in which he first gave us his body). The two-form progression — child + Last-Supper-Man — is unusual; it places the Communion squarely between the Incarnation's beginning (the suckling child) and its ending (the Last Supper). Both bookends of Christ's earthly self-giving are present at the altar.

⁵ As if we were one without difference. Sonder differencie. The passage that has caused Vision 7 to be sometimes called "sensual"; modern scholarship reads it as the metaphysical-erotic register of the mystical-union tradition: Hadewijch reaches for the strongest available word for one-without-difference, and the Latin marginalia in Van Mierlo identifies it as id vere percipitur in sacramento — this is truly what is perceived in the sacrament. The whole vision is a Eucharistic vision in extension: what is received under the species in the sacrament is the full one-without-difference union, here described in the strongest possible terms.

⁶ Fervaerne — Middle Dutch verbal noun roughly "vanishing-into / disappearing-into / faring-into," from varen (to journey, to go) intensified by ver- (away). No good English equivalent; we preserve it untranslated, italicized, on first appearance. The image: the lover fares into the beloved as into a country one travels; the rapture of Vision 7 closes with the lover fervaerne into the Beloved, melted, no self remaining.

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