Blommaerdine, Hadewich (Hadewijch)

BLOMMAERDINE, blem´´mār-dî´ne, HADEWICH or HADEWIJCH: A heretical mystic whose religious activity and writings caused great excitement in Brussels early in the 14th century. Her adherents venerated her as a saint and her writings as divine revelations; her opponents charged her with heretical teaching on the freedom of the spirit, and with mingling religious devotion and sensual passion. During his stay in Brussels (1317–43), Ruysbroeck conducted a strong polemical campaign against her, which, however, did not prevent people from coming after her death to seek the cure of diseases by touching her shroud. The scanty notices which Ruysbroeck's biographer gives of her life and writings have been recently filled out by the scholarly investigations of K. Ruelens and P. Fredericq. They have shown it to be extremely probable that the mystic was identical with the important Flemish poetess Hadewijch (erroneously called "Sister Hadewijch"), whose remains in prose and verse, known only in part heretofore, have been published in full by J. Vercoullie (Ghent, 1877). The principal theme of all these writings is love (Minne) for God. The specimens given by Fredericq display the tempestuous, sometimes actually sensual, passion with which she longs for mystical union with him. In describing her numerous visions the poetess boasts of very intimate relations with Christ and the saints, and claims the gift of prophecy and the power of working miracles. She expresses herself bitterly in regard to the persecutions set on foot by her enemies, the vremden, against herself and her adherents, whom she calls vriende, the nuwen or volmaakten der Minne (perfeti). In one place she gives the number of her then living followers (principally nuns or Beguines) as ninety-seven, of whom twenty-nine were outside the Netherlands. Apparently the domicella Heilwigis dicta Blammardine, the daughter of William Blommaert, a rich and noble citizen of Brussels, who died about 1336, is the same as the mystic and the poetess. It appears that as late as the beginning of the fifteenth century the Inquisition in Brussels was still obliged to proceed against adherents of the heresies promulgated by her, which were not far removed from the views of the Brethren of the Free Spirit.

(Herman Haupt.)

Bibliography: Henricus Pomerius, De origine monasterii Viridisvallis, in Analecta Bollandiana, iv, 286, Paris, 1886; H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition, ii, 377, Philadelphia, 1888; P. Fredericq, Corpus documentorum inquisitionis . . . Neerlandicæ, I, 185 sqq., 266 sqq., The Hague, 1889; idem, De geheimzinnige ketterin Blœmærdinne en de secte der "Nuwe" te Brussel, in Verslagen en Mededeelingen der koninkl. Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, series 3, xii (1895), 77 sqq.; W. A. Jonckblœt, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche letterkunde, ii, 270 sqq., 1889; A. Auger, Étude sur les mystiques des Pays-Bas au moyen âge, in Mémoires couronnés . . . par l’académie royale de Belgique, xlvi (1892), 149 sqq., 164.