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WORDING THE SILENCE: INITIATORY READING OF MYSTICAL TEXTS
of clarity where the reader can be prepared for a state of consciousness in
which she can open herself up for the touch of the secret Word of God. It is
as if in the long letters written in this modus (Letter 22 and 28), and a series
of paragraphs in other letters, Hadewijch had said everything that she as
magistra could say or ‘teach’ about the state a mystic can strive or hope for.
By reading and rereading the texts she has in her possession, the disciple
and would-be magistra may be able to undergo the words that have welled
up in one who has already been touched by the Word and has dwelled in
the unfathomable space of clarity. Reading can then be an intimate, always
accessible ritual of initiation led by the words of the powerful mystic that
Hadewijch was.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Corpus Christianorm, series Latina
DARÓCZI Anikó and MoMMAERS, Paul, Hadewijch. The Complete Letters.
Peeters, Leuven. In press.
MIERLO, Jozef van Hadewijch. Brieven. Tekst en commentaar. Brussel, Gent,
Leuven, 1947.
VERDAM, Jacob: Midelnederlandsch Woordenboek, ‘s-Gravenhaege, Nijhoff,
1911.
Secondary Sources
CARRUTHERS, Mary, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval
Culture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994.
DARÓCZI, Anikó, Groet gheruchte van dien wondere. Spreken, zwijgen en
zingen bij Hadewijch. Peeters, Leuven, 2007.
FRAETERS, Veerle, Prelude: Hadewijch of Brabant and the Beguine Movement.
In: Elizabeth Andersen, Henrike Lahnmann and Anne Simon (ed.):
A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late
Middle Ages, Brill, Leiden, 2014, 32-40 and Textual Appendix, 181-188.
GEHL, Paul: Competens silentium: Varieties of Monastic Silence in the
Medieval West. In: Viator 8 (1987), 125-160.
Gysın, Hans Peter, Studien zur Vokabulaer der Musiktheorie im Mittelalter.
Eine linguistische Analyse. Basel, 1959.
ILLICH, Ivan: Lectio Divina, In: Ursula Schaeffer (ed.), Schriftlichkeit im
frühen Mittelalter. Guter Narr Verlag, Tübingen, 1993, 19-35.
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