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AMY HOLLYWOOD
From: M. Rubin, W. Simons (ed.), The Cambridge History of Christianity, v. 4, Christianity in Western Europe, c. 1100 - c. 1500, Cambridge 2009 (Pages 297-307).
Page 10
In one of her most famous visions, Hadewijch describes Christ's appearance – first as a child and then as a full-grownman – in the reception of the eucharist. With that he came in the form and clothing of a Man, as he was on the day when he gave us his Body for the first time; looking like a Human Being and a Man, wonderful, and beautiful, and with glorious face, he came to me as humbly as any one who wholly belongs to another. Then he gave himself to me in the shape of the Sacrament, in its outward form, as the custom is; and then he gave me to drink from the chalice, in form and taste, as the custom is. After that he came himself to me, took me entirely in his arms, and pressed me to him; and all of my members felt his in full felicity, in accordance with the desire of my heart and my humanity. So that I was outwardly satisfied and fully transported. [22]
Like the trembling and quivering of her heart and veins that proceed this vision, Hadewijch's corporeal language can easily be read as an account of experiences undergone by both the body and soul in loving union with the body and soul of Christ.
Yet even if we understand Hadewijch's language as somatic as well as spiritual, it is important to recognise the limits she places on the ability of this language and this experience to articulate fully her union with God. Thus she goes on to describe an internal union with the Son in which the senses are 'unsaid' and language itself finally fails.
But soon, after a short time, I lost that manly beauty outwardly in the sight of his form. I saw him completely come to nought and so fade and all at once dissolve that I could no longer recognize or perceive him outside of me, and I could no longer distinguish him within me. Then it was to me as if we were one without difference. [23]
Whereas Augustine, Dionysius, Eckhart and other male exegetes argue for and enact the apophasis or 'unsaying' of the names of the divine (found within Scripture and philosophy), Hadewijchhere uses her visionary ecstatic experience as the cataphatic base for apophasis. The ineffability of divine union is thus performatively rendered in and through her experience and her text.
[22] Hadewijch, Complete Works, Vision 7, 281.
[23] Ibid.
