HADWICH, Blessed. - Brabantine mystic; she is the most notable figure in literature in the Dutch dialect at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. She was probably a native of Antwerp; concrete details about her life are lacking.
Her works show her imbued with chivalric spirit, which she likely absorbed from the nobility of her birth and upbringing. H. must have grown up in a Thiois environment, where courtly literature was in vogue and where she could have been influenced by the Provençal troubadours. On the other hand, her knowledge of Latin enabled her to access the writings of the great spiritual authors popular in the Middle Ages. St. Augustine was her favorite author; she knew William of St-Thierry and Cistercian spirituality. From the age of eleven, H. dedicated herself to Minne (divine "Love"). In later years, she seems to have lived in one of those free groupings of "feminae religiosae" that preceded the proper Beguinages. In this circle of devout and mystical virgins, which she led to the supreme conquest of Minne, H. enjoyed great authority. But, like all mystics, she also knew contradiction. A list of perfect "friends of God" that she left behind shows that she had relations, or at least distant acquaintances, in various European countries and even as far as Palestine.
H. left noteworthy writings both in prose and poetry. Her Strophische Gedichten, or collection of "strophic poems," are a rejuvenation and, due to their mystical content, a transfiguration of what courtly poetry had produced best in Provence.
The Love that H. sings is love in its highest reality: God Himself. No accent is therefore forced; all chivalric fidelity is justified, and in the selfless service of this All of Love, nothing is superfluous. H. employs stanza and rhyme with consummate artistry. It has been rightly said that never has the Dutch language worn a more regal mantle.
H. is also attributed a collection of poems remaining, Rijmgedichten, but most of these are of minimal value and clearly denote a later generation than that of the poetess.
Her first collection of prose consists of her apostolic Visionem ("Visions"). Perhaps for her own spiritual director, in her later years, she annotated her mystical experiences of previous years. Unlike the visions of St. Mechtilde and St. Bridget, there is no consideration of social, historical, or politico-religious order. The mystical ascent of the soul to divine conformity takes on the character of a complete assimilation to Christ.
Finally, in her letters (Brieven), H. reveals herself as the great mistress, full of chivalric impulse, who draws a select youth to the mystical conquest of Minne. Here, more than elsewhere, this gifted mystic manifests, alongside her vivid realistic sense, the solid and profound intellectualism that underpins her life and work. If her lyrics make her the greatest poet of the Thiois Middle Ages, her letters make her the greatest prose writer. Her sentences, always wonderfully balanced, are constructed according to the living movement of thought and feeling and abound in lapidary expressions.
In the literatures of the European vernaculars, H. has no equals in the Middle Ages, and in the history of Christian spirituality she is the only one who, to such an extent, conceived and developed the mystical ascent to God in terms of chivalric sentiment.