Hadewijch

Her Letters suggest that she functioned as the head of a beguine house, but that she had experienced opposition that drove her to a wandering life.

[2] This evidence, as well as her lack of reference to life in a convent, makes the nineteenth-century theory that she was a nun problematic, and it has been abandoned by modern scholars.

Beguines were women during the thirteenth century who had a deep love for Jesus Christ, but unlike nuns, did not take formal vows and were free to leave at any time.

Their development was slow at first, however, in the year 1216, Pope Honorius III granted them the right to live in common and encourage others to join them.

Hadewijch was a beguine mystic who had lived during the thirteenth century in the Low Countries, specifically in the city of Antwerp which was in the region of Brabant at the time.

Hadewijch's writings explored themes of divine love, spiritual experiences, and the union of soul with God.

Five groups of texts survive:[4] her writings include poetry, descriptions of her visions, and prose letters.

Hadewijch's Book of Visions (Visioenenboek), the earliest vernacular collection of such revelations, appears to have been composed in the 1240s.

It prominently features dialogue between Hadewijch and Christ in visionary speech, an early example of this mode of vernacular religious instruction.

The Lijst der volmaakten ("list of the perfect ones"), is joined to the Visions in some manuscripts, but to the Poems in Stanzas in a more recent one.

Agatha Anna Bardoel suggests that the visions described by Hadewijch were a result of nothing other than a deep meditation, that, when done on a regular basis, what she was experiencing came to be quite simple and easily repeated.

Love is all!In 2022, Hadewijch was officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day on 22 April.