Harvey D. Egan on Hadewijch

“The Flemish Beguine Hadewijch, is perhaps the most sublime exponent of love mysticism in the Western tradition. This deeply emotional, visionary, and bridal form of mysticism contends that God allows himself to be experienced as love by a person who ardently desires to be united with God in this life”

“Little is known about Hadewijch, one of the greatest women of the "New Mysticism". Her intensely personal writings reveal that she was of noble birth, highly educated, an ecstatic, a profound mystic, and a subtle and daring mystical theologian - but little of the particulars of her life...She was highly esteemed one century later by the great mystic and theologian John Ruusbroec...His contemporary, Jan Van Leeuwan - also a not insignificant theologian and mystic - deemed her the equal of any of the evangelists! Yet only in the twentieth century have her mystical riches come to be appreciated on a broad scale.”