ABSTRACT
Brabant mystic Hadewijch letters, visions, and poems have recently been praised as eminent in the literature of the minnemystiek tradition for their description of an unmediated experience of the divine, which is perfected in minne, or love, and not in ecclesiastical worship. During her lifetime as a Beguine, however, Hadewijch was forced into exile and her literary reputation into obscurity. Although there is a paucity of biographical information about Hadewijch, her writings in the vernacular Middle Dutch convey the imaginative force with which she appropriated the courtly love tradition to reveal her desire for union with love. Addressed variously as a persona and as an abstraction, love represents for Hadewijch both the experience of the divine and the achievement of perfection offered by that experience. Her letters and poems encourage her readers to devote themselves to love as a principle of engagement in both spiritual and mundane matters.
