Hadewijch d'Anvers
XIIIᵉ siècle
The love of God lived as a demanding passion, not a quiet feeling.
Who was Hadewijch d'Anvers?
A Beguine of Brabant, likely the guide of a community, she wrote letters, poems and visions in Middle Dutch. Her language weaves courtly daring with theology: love, Minne, is a force that seizes, tests and transforms. Almost nothing of her life is known; what remains is her work, among the first by a woman in a vernacular tongue.
In their own words
Give yourself wholly to God, to become what He is.
When the soul has nothing but God, and God is all to it, it becomes with Him all that He Himself is.
Love the Divinity not merely with devotion, but with unspeakable desire.