“The wild, wide oneness”: Aspects of the soul and its relationship with god in Pseudo-Hadewijch

This contribution focuses on a cycle of Middle Dutch mystical poems that have not been researched extensively hitherto but which are, nevertheless, of great importance in the development of Middle Dutch mystical literature. The series was initially published in Jozef Van Mierlo’s first critical edition of Hadewijch’s works in 1912, but his later research convincingly demonstrated that Hadewijch did not write them.1 Therefore, the anonymous author is known as “PseudoHadewijch.” The series of poems consists of two distinct sets with different literary forms.2 They are difficult to date, but they were presumably written in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. They were transmitted in only four manuscripts, of which two belonged to the Charterhouse of Herne.