cryptotheism answered:
BEGUINES MY BELOVED
That’s Hadewijch of Antwerp! She used the tropes and language of courtly love poetry, casting herself as the peasant girl yearning for Christ as a handsome and knight above her station.
Imo it’s one of the most powerful explorations of Christian mysticism I’ve ever read. Christianity I feel, has always been at it’s best when it’s focused on these overwhelming, charismatic acts of love. The combination of the Beguines self-imposed chastity with this expression of their love for Christ as an overpowering and unquenchable romantic yearning feels to me like a deeper, more thoughtful exploration of Christianity than anything I’ve read from the church fathers.
It’s erotic! Often explicitly erotic, which is shockingly subversive given the fact that it’s a fucking WOMAN writing erotic poetry about CHRIST in the fucking 1300s. But it’s also philosophically erotic, in the sense that Bataille uses the word. It’s erotic in the sense that it conceptualizes love for Christ as this eternal limit experience, something that is eternally desired yet never attained; it is love that can only grow.
I fucking love the Beguines. They took a vow of chastity so in every sense but the physical they fuck hard.