SOURCE: Milhaven, John Giles. “Hadewijch and the Mutuality of Love.” In Hadewijch and Her Sisters: Other Ways of Loving and Knowing, pp. 3-72. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

In the following excerpt, Milhaven evaluates Hadewijch as a theologian, comparing her views on divinity and her experience of God with those of Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and others.

The theologian, Hadewijch, lived in a Beguinage somewhere in the Low Countries during the middle of the thirteenth century.¹ Beguines were devout women largely of noble families, who lived in self-supporting community, and breaking with precedent, chose to live lives of apostolic poverty, contemplation, and care for the sick without taking vows as nuns (Hadewijch 1980b, p. 3). Hadewijch wrote, in the Dutch language of her time, letters, poetry and accounts of her religious, at times mystical, experience. They come to over three hundred pages in Mother Columba Hart's...