Cambridge University Press, American Society of Church History Church History

American Society of Church History
Trinitarian Love Mysticism: Ruusbroec, Hadewijch, and the Gendered Experience of the
Divine
Author(s): Jessica A. Boon
Source: Church History, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 484-503
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church
History
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Trinitarian Love Mysticism: Ruusbroec,
Hadewijch, and the Gendered Experience
of the Divine1
JESSICA A. BOON
In the early part of the fourteenth century, a parish priest in Brus-

sels came into the possession of a manuscript containing the vernac-
ular letters, visions, and poetry of a woman known only as "beata
Hadewijch." The priest prized the manuscript, even recommending it
to his fellow conventuals decades later,2 and included its primary
tropes of courtly love mysticism (Minnemystik) as an essential part of
many of his writings on the active, interior, and contemplative ways
1. I am deeply indebted to Professor Sara S. Poor of Stanford University for her graduate
course "Writing and Gender in the Middle Ages," which she gave while visiting the
University of Pennsylvania in 1999. The challenges she posed to the categories of male
and female mystics were the foundation for the original conception of this project as a
seminar paper, and her encouragement since has led to its present form. I also thank my
anonymous readers for directing me to research contemporaneous with my own.
All translations of Hadewijch's work are from Hadewijch: The Complete Works, translated
and introduced by Mother Columba Hart (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1980). Jan Van Mierlo
issued separate critical editions of each work. Mommaers and de Paepe have published
editions of two of the works since then, but neither has pre-empted the Van Mierlo
editions: Jozef van Mierlo, S.J, Hadewijch: Brieven, 2 vols. (Antwerp: Standaard, 1947),
Hadewijch: Mengeldichten (Antwerp: Standaard, 1952), Hadewijch: Strophische Gedichten, 2
vols. (Antwerp: Standaard, 1942), and Hadewijch: Visionen, 2 vols. (Louvain: Vlaamsch
Boekenhalle, 1924-25).
All Ruusbroec references are from the ten volumes of the Opera omnia, ed. G. de Baere,
trans. Ph. Crowley and H. Rolfson (Tielt : Lanoo, 1981-); for the most part from volume
3, The Spiritual Espousals, trans. H. Rolfson, 1988, found either as is or as a volume of the
Corpus Christianorum Series.
2. The manuscript is attested to by a member of the community Ruusbroec founded for
canon regulars in Groenendaal. Jan van Leeuwen, originally a cook for the canons, was
taught to read and worship by Ruusbroec and began writing his own texts. In one, he
discusses Hadewijch, mentioning her name and gender, making it clear that she was
known in the community as a female of great spiritual attainments, and that she was
known through her books, which he describes as being "full of good and right doc-
trine." See Jean-Baptiste M. Porion, introduction to Hadewijch: Lettres spirituelles, Beatrice
de Nazareth: Sept degres d'amour, ed. Jean-Baptiste M. Porion (Geneva: Claude Martingay,
1972), 8, n. 2, in which he translates the relevant passage from page 41 of Leeuwen's
Seven Signs of the Zodiac, from the Anthology of his writings published in French by P.
Axters (n.p., 1943).
Jessica A. Boon is a doctoral candidate in the department of Religious Studies at the

University of Pennsylvania.
@ 2003, The American Society of Church History
Church History 72:3 (September 2003)
484
TRINITARIAN LOVE MYSTICISM 485
to mystical union.3 This local

Ruusbroec (1292-1381), has been
tarian theology,4 for his specula
negative theology6-but Ruus
phor of courtly love has only
study.7 An examination of
Ruusbroec's theology, a heavil
means of the metaphor of M
comprehension of their theol
spective on the religious expe
As feminist research has mad
years, our knowledge of indiv
Ages has been limited by th
"voiceless" or "voiced-over" b
thus leaving a partial data set,
separate from women and ma
3. It is clear that Ruusbroec had read Had

guides for others since he not only us
The Kingdom of Lovers (early 1330s) an
specific images of the soul as a free
Spiritual Espousals, 713-52; discussed
Geestelijk Erf 55 [1981]: 205-12) and
(Hadewijch, Vision 1; Ruusbroec, Sp
Columba Hart, introduction to Hadew
[Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1980], 15). My t
article for me.
4. Louis Dupre, The Common Life: The Origins of Trinitarian Mysticism and its Development by
Jan Ruusbroec (New York: Crossroads, 1984).
5. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual
Consciousness (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1961), 505.
6. Rik Van Nieuwenhove, "Ruusbroec: Apophatic Theologian or Phenomenologist of the
Mystical Experience?" The Journal of Religion 80 (January 2000): 83-100.
7. Barbara Gist Cook, "Essential Love: The Erotic Theology of Jan Van Ruusbroec" (Ph.D.
diss., University of Chicago, 2000), and Gordon Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in
the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002). Gist Cook's work, an excellent
discussion of Ruusbroec's melding of Hadewijch's affectivity and Eckhart's essential-
ism, provides a careful theological reading of Hadewijch, yet does not consider her in
the context of the Minnemystik tradition. Rudy's examination of the language of taste
and touch as a metaphor for direct contact with God, as used by Bernard of Clairvaux
and Hadewijch, is a fascinating study that appeared as this article was being considered
for publication. I hope that my article, putting Hadewijch and Ruusbroec side by side,
will serve to spotlight some of the parallels alluded to in Rudy's book (cf. 78-89 and
112-19).
8. See John Coakley, "Gender and the Authority of Friars: The Significance of Holy
Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans," Church History 60 (1991):
445-60 for a quick review, as well as Bernard McGinn, "The Changing Shape of Late
Medieval Mysticism," Church History 65 (1996): 197-219. Also, see Caroline Walker
Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to
Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of
486 CHURCH HISTORY
For the women's wr

posits that women
descriptors of fem
however, have ide
tises in which he
affective mysticism
visions.10 The inte
singular event in t
identified by her
as a pseudonymou
writings rather th
This case thus ha
confirm or questio
aries between me
first and most im
read Hadewijch as
work as he did th
her choice of lan
separate theologica
ends, the portions
representative of
gestive, for then
Pennsylvania Press, 199

Women and Mysticism (N
Women's Visionary Lit
Wiethaus, ed., Maps of F
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracu
9. Bynum discusses at le
importance of food in
records of individual ex
and by men for wome
practices (100-101), ma
(105-12), and so on. By
however, can be taken
10. Reynaert, "Ruusbro
Stephanus Axters, "Ha
Dr. L. Reypens-Album
57-74 was the basis for
translation of Hadewijc
work, which posits t
Ruusbroec's take on ero
influence on him.
11. The majority of cases of female religious affecting male religious took place throug
personal contact. The influence of Margurite Porete's text, Mirouer des simple ames, o
Meister Eckhart is suspected, though not proved as effectively as that of Hadewijch on
Ruusbroec (Michael G. Sargent, "The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete," Viator 28
[1997]: 266, n. 38). As a test case, however, Porete and Eckhart's interaction is compli-
cated by the charges of heresy levied at them both.
discussion of her mystical exp

the capacity for spiritual achie
Both possibilities may indeed b
does not relegate female conce
purely receptive level, for he
differently than he might any
he knew intimately-as a perso
formed a part of the presupp
growth as a mystic over the co
1981 article clarifies that Hade
the course of Ruusbroec's career-his earliest works are infused with
her favorite themes and overarching metaphors,14 while his lat
works, although they quote her poetry directly, no longer reflect
main concerns.15 To provide further evidence for the first point
Ruusbroec accepted Hadewijch, a female, as a fully equal theolog
I will utilize the second possibility to show that it is in fact Ruus
ec's use of this female mystic's language of love, hungering,
suffering for both male and female audiences that is an esse
12. Coakley points to the fact that medieval men made much more of gender distinct
in spirituality than did women, with women considered to be less capable of intelle
activity but more receptive to direct spiritual guidance, ("Gender and the Authori
Friars," 449). McGinn suggests that the feminist model of male domination of wom
the Middle Ages be modified to a conception of "mutual exchange" between the
genders, wherein each provided some guidance, albeit moderated by power differe
("The Changing Shape of Late Medieval Mysticism," 204).
13. A further issue, which has not been addressed in the secondary literature, is that o
importance of Hadewijch as Ruusbroec's sole example of vernacular mysticis
Hadewijch was the first to translate ideas of union with the divine into Fle
metaphor, her work would naturally be the primary framework for Ruusbroec's ab
to articulate ideas that were normally discussed in Latin terminology. This fact ser
to create a problem with the traditional categorization of Ruusbroec as an esse
mystic, since this assumption has always been based on the belief that Ruusbroec's t
"wesen" was equivalent to the scholastic term "esse," which was a subject of m
debate at the time. In fact, as Mommaers emphasizes, Ruusbroec uses the term "we
interchangeably for "being" or "essence" and thus is not using the term in a techn
sense. (Mommaers, Introduction to Die Geestelike Brulocht, by Jan van Ruusbroec, O
Omnia, ed. J. Alaerts [Tielt: Lannoo, 1988], 3:21.)
14. Reynaert, "Ruusbroec en Hadewijch," 205-12.
15. Reynaert, "Ruusbroec en Hadewijch," 233. Ruusbroec's work, The Twelve Begui
begins with a poetic dialogue between a dozen beguines, some of which is t
verbatim from Hadewijch's poetry. See footnotes throughout the first 119 lin
Vanden XII Beghinen, vol. 7 of Opera Omnia. Some of the quotations are from a section
Hadewijch's Stanzaic Poems, which were for a time ascribed to different (anonym
authors. For a resume of the arguments for a "Hadewijch II" and a convincing rebu
of this concept, see Murk-Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hadewij
Mengeldichten (Gbppingen, Germany: Kiimmerle Verlag, 1991), and Murk-Jansen,
Mystical Theology of the Thirteenth-century Mystic Hadewijch and Its Literary Exp
sion," in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium 5, ed. Mar
Glascoe (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992), 117-22.
488 CHURCH HISTORY
marker for tracing

his writings, it is
Hadewijch's Trinit
conceptions of both
unitive experience.
I. THE TRINITARIAN GOUNDWORK OF MINNE
The vast majority of scholarship on Hadewijch has focused on h

use of courtly love metaphorsl6 or how her work reflects typical
female religious experience,17 especially through metaphors such
food and the body.18 This approach, depending primarily on analy
of the two sets of poems in her corpus, which read like experienti
impressions of her day-to-day life,1 leaves aside the doctrinal que
tions she addresses more specifically in her Letters. Given that h
visions and poetry were actually written after a lifetime spent explor-
ing the meaning and effects of mystical union,20 the evocative lan
16. See, for example, Tanis M. Guest, Some Aspects of Hadewijch's Poetic Form in the 'Strofis
Gedichten' (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975); Saskia M. Murk-Janse
The Measure of Mystic Thought; and Marieke Van Baest, Introduction to Poetry
Hadewijch, ed. Marieke Van Baest (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 1998), 7-41.
17. See, for example, Newman, "La mystique courtoise" in From Virile Woman to Wom
Christ, 137-67; Saskia M. Murk-Jansen, "The Mystical Theology of the Thirteent
century Mystic Hadewijch and Its Literary Expression," 117-27; and "The Use of Gend
and Gender-related Imagery in Hadewijch," in Gender and the Text in the Middle Ages, ed
Jane Chance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 52-68; also Emilie Zu
Brunn and Georgette Epiney-Burgard, Women Mystics in Medieval Europe, trans. Shei
Hughes (New York: Paragon House, 1989); Valerie M. Lagorio, "The Medieval Conti
nental Women Mystics: An Introduction," in An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics
Europe, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 198
161-94; and Louis Bouyer, Women Mystics: Hadewijch of Antwerp, Teresa of Avila, Theres
of Lisieux, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Edith Stein, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco
Calif.: Ignatius, 1993). Bernard McGinn provided the first fully theological analysis o
Hadewijch in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 12
1350, vol. 3 in The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York
Crossroads, 1998), 200-222, a trend followed by his students Barbara Gist Cook an
Gordon Rudy. McGinn continues, however, to group Hadewijch with Mechethild
Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete, thus at least in this work perpetuating the distin
tion between male and females brands of mysticism (a distinction he himself brea
down in other works; see the penultimate page of this article).
18. That is, Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 153-61, and Petroff, Body and Soul, 182-20
19. Most authors choose to analyze Hadewijch only in the light of her poetry. The two ma
scholarly books in English on Hadewijch focus on her poetics (Guest, Some Aspec
Murk-Jansen, Measure of Mystic Thought). Translations into both English and French also
tend to be of her sets of poetry (see Van Baest, and Jean Baptiste M. Porion, Introduction
to Hadewijch d'Anvers: Poemes des Beguines traduits du moyen-Neerlandais par Fr. J.-B. P
ed. Jean-Baptiste M. Porion [Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1954], 7-56.) Again, Gist Cook an
Rudy depart from this tendency.
20. Hadewijch states clearly that her visions began in childhood, but that she wrote them
down much later. Some take this to mean that her visions represent an early stage in
guage she uses is in fact the resu

of God and cannot be analyzed s
es.21 Hadewijch's reach towards t
of courtly love in the course of
manipulation of language, in wh
primarily to provide a vehicle for
tarian theology-a move that m
Ruusbroec. In Hadewijch, whose
experience written for no know
metaphor of a sought-after an
describe a lifetime's experience o
the other hand, wrote systematic
for the inner lives of monks an
intend his overall focus on the T
ogy of an unattainable God, but
description of lived union. It is,
love mysticism that provides Ru
meanings to emphasize his Trini
mystical development, while Suydam sugg

Hadewijch's mature mysticism since they w
mature reflection and interpretation. M
Visions and the Religious Experience Acco
Feminist Studies in Religion 12 (1996): 5-11
21. Many scholars mistakenly consider Ha
ited descriptions of a mystical experience,
In fact, all reports of contact with the div
the very language that a person picks to
or her conceptual knowledge of the world
his or her religious tradition. For further
"Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,"
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992
22. She is one of the few women writers of
writing at the behest of a confessor or su
audience of women since they address spec
is no hint in either the visions or the p
indeed if they were written for herself
letters, as guides, differ greatly from Ru
subject at a time without an overall organ
23. In his essay on the unio mystica, Dupre
mysticism (in Christianity) is by definitio
to discuss speculative aspects in a mystic
must be either the cause or the result of
into speculative and affective fail by virt
described. Love mysticism is in fact a nec
the praxis of what is being described in
State and the Experience," in Mystical U
Ecumenical Dialogue, eds. Moshe Idel an
1996), 17.
490 CHURCH HISTORY
Given my suggestio
Ruusbroec's spiritua
comprehension of G
metaphor of Minne
of mapping out the
ticism and Trinitari
as a vehicle for Trin
and thus functions a
Paepe has shown,25
many different conte
of her project simp
Hadewijch refers to
rience of loving God
of a permanently d
Hadewijch encourage
that is, to God, with
that towards which
Were anyone ready i
He would receive from her a reward:
And if he loved Love with the power of love,

He would speedily become love with Love.26
It is very sweet to wander lost in love

Along the desolate ways Love makes us travel...
But they who serve Love with truth

Shall in love walk with Love
All round that kingdom where Love is Lady.27
24. A recent discussion of Minne, including reference to Hadewijch's Trinitarianism

found in Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation, 78ff.
25. Paul Mommaers summarizes in French De Paepe's Hadewijch Strofische Gedic
"Bulletin d'histoire de la spiritualite: L'&cole neerlandaise," Revue d'histoire de la
tualite 49 (1973): 477-88. Mommaers and Guest, among others, accept this an
though they qualify it with the critique that De Paepe ends up identifying
primarily as experience, thus forgetting the fact that a good part of the time th
does indeed function as a name for the Trinity or for Christ. Mommaers, "Bulleti
and Tanis M. Guest, "Hadewijch and Minne," in The European Context: Studies
History and Literature of the Netherlands presented to Theodoor Weevers, eds. P. K. K
P. F. Vincent (Cambridge: The Modern Humanities Research Association, 1971),
Gist Cook argues that Hadewicjh's use of Minne is primarily as a synonym for t
Spirit (130, 279-80, and so on), whereas Rudy advocates the idea of multivalen
26. Stanzaic Poem 8: 3-4, 6-7. Hadewijch of Antwerp, Hadewijch: The Complete W
translated and introduced by Mother Columba Hart (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1980)
27. Stanzaic Poem 34: 33-34, 36-37, The Complete Works, 225.
Were "Love" to refer only to

the metaphor of courtly love i
albeit an idealized one. Instead
"becoming love" and "walkin
stant experience of God, recog
This sense of experiential mo
phrases using Minne continues
the word as a proper noun to
emphasize that the reality of
aspects. On the level of the infra
Persons of the Trinity to have
and with the Unity. In Hadew
Love, for each member of the
member, and the Unity dem
Trinity. The name Minne, at on
the verb minnen, "to love," cont
relational demand, for love as
more static entities of the nou
single name to indicate the in
theology of the Trinity is in f
trope of courtly love, for in this
to the inherent problematic o
God is. God as Trinity and God
limits of human rationality an
separately but are in fact one
visions, and poems in which Ha
the Trinity and the Unity at fir
yet by separating out the two as
clarify the details of what actu
will then echo in combinatio
Minne.
Only Hadewijch's comprehension of the coexistence of the Trinity
and the Unity allows her audience to understand how courtly love
can be a metaphor for God, because it is the simultaneity of what she
associates with the Trinitarian and Unitarian aspects of God that
necessitates the presence of both the extreme happiness and the
constant complaints characteristic of courtly love throughout her
work. Hadewijch discusses the Trinity as the aspect of God's interac-
tion with the world, while linking the Unity to the beyond,28 that is to
a notion of God at once greater and simpler than the realm of the
28. Letter 30:107, The Complete Works, 118.
492 CHURCH HISTORY
earth. Both concepts

minds are incapable
if God in Godself co
experience, that is u
aspects as well. Such
greater beyond allo
humans in this life and blissful union with the God that is Love are
necessary attributes of a complete mystical experience.29
Hadewijch's experience of spiritual fruition, described as blissfu
moments (her visionary experiences) in the arms of her Lady Lov
followed by despair during normal moments when she is not ful
living in union with the divine, is caught by her trope of courtly love
Alas! Where then is Love,
When someone cannot find her
Someone, that is,
Who employs all he ever had
And nevertheless does not find Love-
Someone to whom Love sends love
So that Love keeps him revolving in woe,
And yet he cannot experience her?30
Hadewijch finds herself obligated to embrace the suffering sh

when not fully united to Love as a necessary consequence of
with God, for the contentment of union with the Unity is in
limited experience of God, which is completed only when the
continues on with existence in the world. Only one who exper
both aspects of God, Trinity/activity and Unity/simplicity, ha
experienced God.31 Hadewijch underlines the necessity of bot
pects to human life even further by the use of Christology. "
indeed wish to be God with God, but God knows there are few
who want to live as men with his Humanity, or want to carry his
with him, or want to hang on the cross with him and pay hum
debt to the full."32 She suggests that we must imitate Christ
Nicean sense-as both fully divine and fully human. One sc
points out that, since Augustine, seeking to be like God in the sen
29. Letter 17:26, The Complete Works, 82. Letter 30:167, The Complete Works, 119.
30. Stanzaic Poem 36: 111-18, The Complete Works, 233. Note the gender play that H
employs here-it is her soul under discussion, but the noun "soul" has the male g
She plays on this frequently, as well as on the concept of "Lady Love" as a fema
See Murk-Jansen, "The Use of Gender and Gender-related Imagery in Hadewijch
a full discussion.
31. Letter 30:84-145, The Complete Works, 117-18, and Mommaers, "Bulletin," 475-7
also Saskia Murk-Jansen, Brides in the Desert: The Spirituality of the Beguines (Marykn
N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998), 72-73.
32. Letter 6:227, The Complete Works, 61.
exemplarism has meant both se

be like the Trinity.33 Thus Had
late medieval focus on the phn
deeply Trinitarian theologian
concept of God into Trinity an
of how the two most striking
the visions) and complaints abo
can and must be reconciled within a tradition in which the Godman
contains the promise of salvation. For Hadewijch, only Minne, ref
ring at once to God as lady, the soul as knight, and to the lov
relationships within God and between lover and God, can capture
one many-layered phrase the multiplicity of the experience of sim
union with a God beyond descriptors.
We have seen how Hadewijch turns to the language of courtly lov
of unfulfilled yearning for that which is deemed the highest goal,
convey the delight and pain she feels as a result of her experience
union. Within the framework of Minnemystik, its themes and voc
ulary, Hadewijch also makes use of several other metaphors to rev
her concept of Minne, metaphors that have been identified by modern
scholars as tropes typical of medieval women's writing. Schol
engaged in reconstructing the experience of female mystics and
sionaries in the Middle Ages focus on the elements of body, especia
on physical suffering and eating, building on the principle th
women who were neither educated in church doctrine as theologia
nor allowed to conduct church ritual as priests, tended to express thei
experiences of union with God in terms that they could relate to their
own lives. Elizabeth Petroff has focused on the dichotomy betwe
body (associated with women) and soul (associated with men) a
how the image of the suffering body plays a part in both accepting th
dichotomy and elevating women's experience because of it. Caroli
Walker Bynum has surveyed women's use of the trope of hungeri
and eating.3" Hadewijch in fact combines these typically "female
33. Sheila Carney, "Exemplarism in Hadewijch: The Quest for Full-grownness," Down
Review 103 (October 1985): 278-80. Hadewijch would have known this idea throug
William of St. Thierry. She quotes his work directly in Letter 18:80-112.
34. Hadewijch's vision of the Trinity (Vision 1) underscores this point, for on top of a s
supported by three pillars (the Trinity) and surrounded by roiling waters (divin
fruition) is seated the Godhead (line 236), who speaks to Hadewijch of the importa
of suffering in life, as demonstrated by Christ (228-364). See also Rudy, Mystic
Language of Sensation, 89-93.
35. Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, "Introduction," Medieval Women's Visionary Literature.
36. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; also "Religious Women in the Later Middle Ages,"
Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, ed. Jill Raitt (New York: Cros
roads, 1987), 121-39.
494 CHURCH HISTORY
emphases on body,
hungering to describ
touched by, God. Th
God will have a hun
Inseparable satiety a
are the appanage of
Satiety: for Love com

Hunger: for she wit
How does Love's com

Filled with wonder,
One soul assaults th

As he who is Love itself showed us
When he gave us himself to eat,
By this he made known to us

That love's most intimate union
Is through eating, tasting, and seeing interiorly.
He eats us; we think we eat him,
And we do eat him.
But because he remains so undevoured,

And so untouched, and so undesired,
Each of us remains uneaten by him
And separated so far from each other.39
Hadewijch frequently resorts to this metaphor of an unsatiated

hunger for Love, whether in reference to the Eucharist or separately,
to convey her perception of what it is to live on earth in full knowl-
edge of the divine, which she elsewhere discusses under the rubric of
the Trinity and Unity, or the humanity and divinity of Christ. Accord-
ing to Bynum, who gives perhaps the most theologically sensitive
feminist reading of Hadewijch: "To Hadewijch, hunger and devour-
ing were powerful and central images for the love that is union;
... [she] thus proceed[s] to divinity through a humanity that is in-
37. Used as a synonym for touch at times. In Latin, sabere means to taste or to know, as was
pointed out by medieval mystics, including William of Thierry (Bynum, Holy Feast and
Holy Fast, 151). Given that William of Thierry is the only author Hadewijch quotes
directly, she may very well have been aware of the wordplay going on in the Latin and
have chosen to translate it into Flemish.
38. Stanzaic Poem 33:25-26, 29-30, 33-34, The Complete Works, 222-23.
39. Poems in Couplets, 16:32-34, 36-45, The Complete Works, 353.
tensely physical."40 Although I

Hadewijch, I question the possibi
an example of female experience,
book subtitled "The Religious
Women." As for Ruusbroec, it
only does he rely on a multiv
Trinity at key points in his wo
gious, but indeed he often pair
ideas of tasting, touching, and
a male writer makes use of thes
men, how particularly female c
II. LOVE WITHIN TRINITARIAN UNION
Ruusbroec is known above all among theologians and academ

scholars alike for his Trinitarian mysticism. "[He] is perhaps the on
author whose spiritual doctrine is exclusively Trinitarian.... F
Ruusbroec, the very 'forms' of the mystical experience are the fun
tion of the continuity of the God Three in One."41 Ruusbroec's do
trine on the Trinity is fully evident in the work that he himself
considered his most advanced work,42 The Spiritual Espousals (Die
Geestelike Brulocht), a work structured to review the methods for livi
a properly spiritual life. In it, Ruusbroec discusses the active life, t
interior life, and the contemplative life, treating each as possibly
sufficient in itself to reach towards God, but also suggesting a pr
gression in perfection from the active life that anyone can live to
contemplative life achieved by a very few. He lays great emphasis
the fact that the Trinity and Unity of God are in fact one. We a
humans are unable to grasp the existence of difference and unity
once, and so we refer to the Trinity and the Unity, but God in himsel
is above the necessity for distinctions.43 The closest Ruusbroec c
come to expressing what exists at the same time in the Godhead is
40. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 165.

41. Paul Henry, "La mystique trinitaire du bienheureux Jean Ruusbroec, pt. 1," Recherch
de science religieuse 39-40: 335. My translation from the French.
42. James A. Wiseman, Introduction to John Ruusbroec: The Spiritual Espousals and Oth
Works, trans. James A. Wiseman (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1985), 7.
43. SE, b916-19. Jan van Ruusbroec, Die Geestelike Brulocht, in Opera omnia, ed. G. de Ba
(Lanoo: Tielt, 1988), 3:408. The standard abbreviation for The Spiritual Espousals is SE
while the a, b, or c designation before the line number refers to the first, second, a
third sections of the book. The critical editions in the Opera omnia contain the Engl
translation on the verso page, and the Dutch original and, if applicable, the Lati
translation on the recto.
496 CHURCH HISTORY
discuss them both i

Trinity and Unity is
and activity. "[R]est
thus, both remain fo
life of good works
spiritual exercises, i
God.
For this just person has established a true life in the spirit-in rest
and in activity-which shall abide eternally; but after this life, it shall
pass over into a higher state. Thus the person is just and goes to God
with inner love by eternal activity; and he goes into God with
enjoyable inclination, by eternal rest; and he abides in God and yet,
he goes out to all creatures in common love, in virtues, and in justice.
And this is the summit of the inner life.46
Although Ruusbroec often refers to rest in God as the goal of spiritual

striving, he never considers it the final point of life. The image of "flu
and reflux," of the soul actively going upwards towards rest an
returning down from rest towards active works and active contem-
plation, permeates his work.47 In this sense, man is truly the image of
God, for he goes into rest in the Unity and out into activity with th
Three Persons, just as the active Trinity is constantly going toward
the resting Unity that in turn goes back out to the Trinity. Go
Himself is rest and activity at once, while man in God's image
formed to cycle through the two states.48
The rest and activity that is the Triunity49 in both man and God
perhaps best expressed by a lengthy passage in which Ruusbroec is
44. "Nevertheless, it all exists in unity, and (it is) undivided in the sublime nature of t
Godhead. But the relations which constitute the personal properties exist in an eterna
distinction. For the Father without cease gives birth to His Son, and He Himself is not
born. And the Son is born, and He cannot give birth. Thus the Father is always having
a Son in eternity, and the Son a Father; and these are the relations of the Father to the
Son, and of the Son to the Father. And the Father and the Son spirate one Spirit, which
is the will, or love, of them both. And this Spirit neither gives birth nor is born, but
flowing out from both, He must eternally be spirated. And these three Persons are on
God and one Spirit. And all the attributes, with (their) outflowing operations, are
common to all the persons, for they work in the power of a one-fold nature." Spiritua
Espousals, lines b921-31, pages 408-10.
45. Spiritual Espousals, lines b1722-73, page 508.
46. Spiritual Espousals, lines b1955-60, pages 534-36.
47. Spiritual Espousals, lines b932ff., pages 410ff.
48. Louis Dupre devotes a chapter to the rest and activity of God, and man as image of th
rest and activity, in The Common Life, 29-51. Also see James A. Wiseman, "Minne in Di
gheestelike brulocht," in Jan van Ruusbroec: The Sources, Content, and Sequels of his Myst
cism, eds. Paul Mommaers and N. de Paepe (Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press,
1984), 86-99, and Gist Cook, Essential Love, 314ff.
49. Triunity is my own term, coined unintentionally as a shorthand form of referring to the
emphasis these two mystics put on the equal importance and the simultaneous existence
clearly influenced by the Minn

love of God and God as love pe
of the active and interior life,
ing in these paragraphs in wh
referents for Minne with his
demand into a short resume of
In this storm of love [minnen], tw
and our spirit. God, through th
wards us, and thereby we are to
ation and the faculty of loving,
itself towards God, and thereby
His gifts, our loving craving an
steadfast. This flowing out and
love to overflow.... Thus the spir
and it goes so deeply into God's
craving and is reduced to nothing
its activity, and it becomes itsel
possesses the innermost (core) of
where all creaturely works beg
foundation and ground of all vir
Now our spirit and this love are l
therefore, the faculties cannot rem
the incomprehensible brightne
hover above the spirit and stir t
then falls back into its activity w
than ever before. And the more inner and nobler it is, the more
quickly it must exhaust its activity, being reduced to nothing in love,
and then it falls back into new activity. And this is the life of
heaven.... Here there is an eternal out-flowing in charity and in
virtues, and an eternal return inwards with an inner hunger to savor
God, and an eternal indwelling in one-fold love. And all of this is in
a creaturely fashion and beneath God.51
It is evident from this passage that the distinction made for many
years between Ruusbroec's Wesenmystik and Hadewijch's Minnemystik
is a false dichotomy. Ruusbroec's supposedly speculative mysticism
finds its highest expression not in negative theology, which moves up
towards God by means of naming what God is not, but rather in a
of the Trinity and Unity in God. Although my use of the term may have started as a
noun form of the liturgical phrase "triune God," I find it useful as a name for God in this
context because it captures in one word the multiple aspects of the one God as
experienced by these two mystics.
50. This passage is cited in both Gist Cook, Essential Love, 309, and Rudy, Mystical Language
of Sensation, 114. Neither, however, goes on to quote the next few paragraphs, both of
which contain key concepts parallel to Hadewijch's thought.
498 CHURCH HISTORY
mysticism that is a
sufficient number
appropriate single
excellent descriptor
Love demands love from Love and from the lover in a constant
seesaw between love directed towards the world by God,
God by the world, in between elements of God/Love, and t
the world by human lovers.53 Although Ruusbroec's system
position of the stages of spiritual life has often been conside
distant, more logical, and more male than Hadewijch's su
feminine expositions on the love and suffering she is underg
systematic nature of Ruusbroec's work is in fact a structure
on what is primarily a message about "the experience of
union."54
III. TRINITARIAN LOVE MYSTICS: BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF

GENDER
This discussion of Ruusbroec's Trinitarian theology has been brief

because it seems self-evident that he found Hadewijch's language of
love essential as a means of conveying a portion of his conception of
the path towards God. The passage quoted above follows directly
after a startling (to one sensitized to Hadewijch) paragraph.
Here begins an eternal hunger which will never be filled. It is an
inward avidity and craving on the part of the faculty of loving and
of the created spirit for an uncreated good.... Here are great dishes
of food and drink about which no one knows but the one who feels
this. But full satiety in enjoyment is the dish that is missing. This is
why the hunger is always renewed. Nevertheless, in this touch flow
honey-streams full of all bliss.... God's inward stirring and touch
makes us hungry and makes us crave, for the Spirit of God spurs our
spirit: the oftener the touch, the stronger the hunger and the craving.
And this is the life of love in its supreme activity, above reason and
understanding, for here reason can neither give to nor take from
love, for our love is touched by divine love.
52. Guest, Some Aspects, 12.

53. Ruusbroec uses the terms "Minne" and "minnen" as his vocabulary of choice, over t
other choices of "karitate" or "liefde" (Wiseman, "Minne in Die gheestelike brulocht,"
86-89). Although Ruusbroec focuses on the verb "minnen" more than on "Minne" as
name for God, this focus can be attributed to his training in theology, which would ha
made him more traditional in his names for God. The range of meanings for "love" in
his work, however, is as multivalent as Hadewijch's.
54. Paul Mommaers, "Une phrase clef des Noces Spirituelles," in Jan van Ruusbroec: Th
Sources, Content, and Sequels of his Mysticism, eds. P. Mommaers and N. de Paepe
(Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 1984), 101.
What is of great interest is t

Hadewijch's main themes of hu
quotation above,56 but where
Spiritual Espousals, Ruusbroec
various possibilities for a full
the rubric of the active, inter
Ruusbroec discusses each of the
does not devote equal time
three-fourths of the book to
involving both interior spirit
Since his audience was his fell
thought that, although all me
few could attain the contempla
to reach the middle stage, that
and achievable, then, the inter
need of a manual,59 and it is,
where Hadewijch's influence b
Ruusbroec's recourse to the lan
with hungering, savoring, tastin
of his discussion of the inter
appears at the highest level of t
hope to attain. The case of Ru
"female" metaphors as either
56. It should be noted that Ruusbroec's r

to love in this passage undercuts Bynu
mystics about which she states: "None
(Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 105
importance of taste and touch in Ruus
on his use of the sense of touch, treati
of Sensation, 112, note 22). Nor doe
metaphor of hunger certainly exists in
was the other primary influence on R
to the question posed by an anonymou
or Eckhart was Ruusbroec's source fo
neous occurrence in the quoted passage
suffering and love loving love, in ad
heavily in her favor as the source of t
57. In the Opera Omnia edition, the book o
lines, and the contemplative life a mer
58. Paul Mommaers, Introduction to Die
59. The Little Book of Contemplation (Bo
stage primarily and was written in res
monks who had read Ruusbroec's firs
ghelieven) (Wiseman, Introduction, 28-
in the first volume of Ruusbroec's Ope
the Kingdom of Lovers is translated in t
Paulist Press edition.
500 CHURCH HISTORY
propriate for female

the metaphors of f
female to convey t
towards an interior union with a God who is Love.
The automatic next question to consider is-what does Ruusbroe
do in relation to women? Does he advocate the same level of interior
life for them? If not, is he using a woman's metaphors for men becaus
men are the ones who usually achieve the mystical experience thi
anomalous female described? In fact, Ruusbroec's writings fo
women, although different from the Spiritual Espousals and less struc-
tured, do demonstrate his belief that women could achieve strong
dynamic interior lives. His work entitled The Seven Enclosures appears
at first glance to be a very prosaic and practical guide to how nun
should regulate their active lives. But before we dismiss Ruusbroec
one who thought women were not capable of mystical experience, w
should consider both the form and content of the work in question. In
it, Ruusbroec was not engaged in writing a spiritual treatise-rather
The Seven Enclosures is a letter to a nun who had written him request-
ing a guide for daily life.60 Thus his insistence on the trivialities o
day-to-day existence is in fact a response to what his female interlo
utor had requested. Secondly, although a great deal of the letter i
devoted to mundane details (proper dress, ways to receive visitors
and so on), his concluding description of the seven enclosures chos
successively over the course of a nun's life likens the seven stages
the sequence of active, interior, and contemplative lives that he ha
presented perhaps ten years earlier in the Spiritual Espousals. The first
enclosure a nun chooses is the convent, and the second is reason;6
these are equivalent to the active spiritual life away from the wor
The next five enclosures describe a progressive interiorization aw
from outside distractions. This route of the soul through various
levels of love of God, prayer, and eventually contemplation lea
towards the seventh enclosure, in which the woman rests, at least f
a moment, in a love beyond activity.62 Such love is described by bo
Hadewijch and Ruusbroec as the highest level of mystical unio
possible for anyone, of any gender.
Given that Ruusbroec does advise a woman on how to reach the
highest level of union, it is clear that Ruusbroec did not make a
and fast distinction between the possible spiritual achievement
60. Jan van Ruusbroec, Vanden seven sloten, in Opera Omnia, vol. 2, introduced and ed
G. de Baere, translated by H. Rolfson (Lannoo: Tielt, 1989).
61. Vanden Seven Sloten, lines 475-503, pages 152-56.
62. Vanden Seven Sloten, lines 615-23, pages 168-70.
men and women.63 In fact, his Mir

the same nun, is considered to c
sages on the mystical experience.64
ent from the earlier Spiritual Espo
ways. First, these works for wo
infused with the doctrine and vo
the points at which the above me
hungering, and touching reappears
the contemplative life, not the int
her metaphors in the highest level
he had previously, in his works
the second tier. Why might this
scant attention to Hadewijch arg
fied as speculative, and not af
concept of the highest level of
difference," a union presumed b
beyond activity. Since Hadewijch
of both rest and activity, both
Unity and Trinity), some have t
perfect state of union. It would
these traditional assumptions tha
successful description of the sp
Ruusbroec would use Hadewijch's
life but reserve other terms for th
Two important facts about med
Hadewijch in particular undermi
63. Another possible point of verification i

The Spiritual Espousals, referring rather t
the face of the heresy of the Free Spiri
questions from particular people or com
records of who actually read The Spiritua
a friend of Ruusbroec's from a nearby Car
7), but that does not mean that Ruusbro
people who could benefit from his descrip
64. Wiseman, Introduction, 26.
65. Reynaert, 220.
66. The seventh enclosure equates to the third kind of life, called the living life, in The Mirror
of Eternal Blessedness (Een Spieghel der eeuwigher salicheit), vol. 8 in Opera Omnia, ed. G. de
Baere, trans. A. Lefevere (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). The ideas of flux and reflux appear
on pages 364-70 (lines 1619-82); the metaphor of the living spring so essential to the
interior life section of The Spiritual Espousals appears in the Mirror on page 380 (line
1779), and so on. Interestingly, in this work for women, Ruusbroec spends 9 pages on
the active life, 36 pages on the interior life, and 14 pages on the contemplative life (based
on the pages of Wiseman's translation in the Paulist Press). Ruusbroec thus shows more
concern for the possibility of a contemplative life for women than he does for the active
life.
502 CHURCH HISTORY
dismisses the scholar

pointing out that H
dissolves distinction
body and soul, thu
equal to the imageles
Suydam's discussion
broad thesis that the
the synthesis of the
negative theology (th
tics of the later Mid
gests that this unio
"bodily union" usual
suggested about Hadew
a descriptor of unio
attributes of person
bodily language of s
description (as one
Ruusbroec's advocac
union, found in all
static rest beyond t
distinguish between
decades of develop
yond his original re
experiential mystici
of union, the contem
Ruusbroec's spiritua
to the realization t
successful formulati
because it provided
experience.71 A metap
with other metaphors
naming of a lived ex
human description
vide a guide for th
67. Suydam, 16.

68. Bernard McGinn, "The A
Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo
69. McGinn, "Abyss," 112
70. Elona K. Lucas, "Psych
wich," Studia Mystica 9 (F
71. Both Gist Cook, in he
Ruusbroec's erotic theolog
both Bernard and Hadewi
much abstract theology had been

Hadewijch's language in the cont
vides yet more evidence for Ruu
between the possible spiritual
Ruusbroec's view, men and women could achieve the union with God
that allowed them to mirror the inner workings of God, simulta-
neously resting in union with the Unity and being active in the world
with the Trinity. In his quest to describe that which is beyond de-
scription, Ruusbroec not only broke down linguistic barriers to com-
prehending the Trinity but also broke past the traditional separation
between the genders hypothesized by scholars in order to profit from
the insights of a female mystic.

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American Society of Church History

In the early part of the fourteenth century, a parish priest in Brus-

Jessica A. Boon is a doctoral candidate in the department of Religious Studies at the

to mystical union.3 This local

3. It is clear that Ruusbroec had read Had

For the women's wr

Pennsylvania Press, 199

discussion of her mystical exp

marker for tracing

I. THE TRINITARIAN GOUNDWORK OF MINNE

The vast majority of scholarship on Hadewijch has focused on h

guage she uses is in fact the resu

mystical development, while Suydam sugg

And if he loved Love with the power of love,

It is very sweet to wander lost in love

But they who serve Love with truth

24. A recent discussion of Minne, including reference to Hadewijch's Trinitarianism

Were "Love" to refer only to

28. Letter 30:107, The Complete Works, 118.

earth. Both concepts

Hadewijch finds herself obligated to embrace the suffering sh

exemplarism has meant both se

Satiety: for Love com

How does Love's com

One soul assaults th

By this he made known to us

But because he remains so undevoured,

Hadewijch frequently resorts to this metaphor of an unsatiated

tensely physical."40 Although I

II. LOVE WITHIN TRINITARIAN UNION

Ruusbroec is known above all among theologians and academ

40. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 165.

discuss them both i

Although Ruusbroec often refers to rest in God as the goal of spiritual

clearly influenced by the Minn

III. TRINITARIAN LOVE MYSTICS: BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF

This discussion of Ruusbroec's Trinitarian theology has been brief

52. Guest, Some Aspects, 12.

What is of great interest is t

56. It should be noted that Ruusbroec's r

propriate for female

men and women.63 In fact, his Mir

63. Another possible point of verification i

dismisses the scholar

67. Suydam, 16.

much abstract theology had been

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