Medieval Mystic Hadewijch: When Christ Becomes the Divine Lover

Hadewijch was a Flemish Beguine, a member of a community of laywomen who patterned their lives on the life of Christ. These women took vows of chastity and poverty; they wove cloth, wrote mystical poetry, and cared for the sick. They lived together in complexes known as Beguinages, some with hundreds of residents, small cities of single devout women. There, Hadewijch wrote inventive poems about Christ as her lover. Bynum suggests that her lyrics sound like a description of an orgasm: “He came himself to me, took me entirely in his arms, and pressed me to him…so I was outwardly satisfied and fully transported.” Hadewijch begins to dissolve: “I could no longer distinguish him within me.” They were “mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, soul in soul.” Many of these women had taken vows of celibacy. They weren’t supposed to be tasting Christ’s dripping white honey. But by using the imagery of belief—of the Song of Songs, of the Passion—they could physically become Christ, loving and entering him, their flesh mingling with his.

Maglaque, Erin. “Vexed by Sex.” The New York Review of Books, April 24, 2025. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/04/24/lower-than-the-angels-diarmaid-macculloch/.