ABSTRACT
Only sparse information about Hadewijch's life is known to us today, although her works greatly influenced Carthusian spirituality and the Devotio moderna movement, in particular Ruusbroec and Jan van Leeuwen. Hadewijcb might have been active in either Brussels or Antwerp as a beguine, living together with other women who became her students or, as documented in her moving letters, her enemies. Hadewijch's work, now considered one of the most remarkable medieval mystical texts in the vernacular, consists of thirty-one letters, forty-five stanzaic poems, fourteen visions, and sixteen poems in rhyming couplets. Hagiography can be understood only with reference to the concept of sanctity and to the practice of the cult of saints. For medieval Christians, saints were those "holy people" who had posthumously entered the Kingdom of Heaven. The contours of hagiography changed dramatically in the 9th century. Ecclesiastical authorities came to rely increasingly on written documentation for the authenticity of saints and their veneration.
