ABSTRACT

The mystical treatises of William of Saint-Thierry – our ‘pious jackal’ – made for popular literature among contemplative religious women in the thirteenth-century Low Countries. 1 One need only look to Hadewijch’s Letter 18 to find an entire paragraph copied out literally from his De natura et dignitate amoris, though in Middle Dutch translation. 2 But there is little chance that Hadewijch knew she was translating from William of Saint-Thierry; she probably wouldn’t even have recognised his name. More than likely, this is also true of William’s thirteenth-century readership generally, and of Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) – our ‘pseudo-woman’ – in particular. 3 In her case, however, discerning William’s influence is a great deal more complex – we find no paragraphs of text simply reproduced.