Letter 24: Hildegard to Christian, Archbishop of Mainz
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen mediator between Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III—not to mention the apparent ease with which Hildegard could locate eyewitnesses to affirm the truth of the absolution. In any case, Hildegard was obdurate, resolutely refusing to give up the body.
(The "protocol" of her canonization reports that she made the sign of the cross over the grave with her bacillus, causing the tomb to vanish without a trace.) Hildegard remained splendidly defiant, suffering, at this late stage in her life, all the consequences of excommunication, seeking all the while to have the decision overturned.
2. How cannily Hildegard plays her masculine audience!
3. This is a frequent theme in the letters and the other works: the loss of the "virility" of the earlier Church. Hence a woman, paradoxically, has been called by God to help restore this lost virility. In one of the numerous autobiographical sections in the Vita, Hildegard writes, "Eleven hundred years after the Incarnation of Christ the doctrine of the apostles and the burning justice which had been firmly established in the Christians and spiritual people began to falter and turned into hesitation." And then she makes the specific application to herself, "I was born in those times." See Newman,
Sister of Wisdom, pp. 238-49.
Hildegard to Christian, Archbishop of Mainz1
The prelates of Mainz of the previous letter had acted in the name of their archbishop, Christian, who was away in Italy serving as mediator between Pope Alexander III and Frederick Barbarossa. Here, Hildegard informs Christian of the causes of the conflict and the steps she had taken to resolve it, and prays for his assistance.
O most gentle father and lord, appointed to be Christ's representative as shepherd of the flock of the Church, we humbly give thanks to almighty God and to your paternal piety that you have received our letter compassionately, poor though we are, and that in your mercy you have deigned to send a letter to our superiors in Mainz on our behalf when we were sorely tried and perplexed.2
We give thanks also for the kind words expressed with your usual clemency, which (brought by Hermann, dean of the church of the Holy Apostles in Cologne) so consoled and cheered us in our trials and tribulations that we have run to you in all confidence, like daughters to their cherished father. Therefore, gracious lord, we your servants, who sit in the grief of our trials and tribulations and have humbly cast ourselves at your feet, now tearfully lay bare to you the full truth concerning the cause of our intolerable grief. We are confident that the fire of Love, which is God, will so inspire you that your paternal piety will deign to hear the cry of lament, which, in our tribulation, we raise to you.
The Letters
O mild father, as I informed you earlier in a letter, a certain young man who was buried in our cemetery had been absolved from excommunication for some time before his death and had been fortified with all the sacraments of the Christian faith. When our superiors at Mainz ordered us to cast him out of our cemetery or else refrain from singing the divine offices, I looked, as usual, to the True Light, through which God instructed me that I was never to accede to this: one whom He had received from the bosom of the Church into the glory of salvation was by no means to be disinterred. For to do so against the will of His truth would bring great and terrible danger down upon us. Yet I would have humbly obeyed them, and would have willingly yielded up that dead man, excommunicated or not, to anyone whom they had sent in your name to enforce the inviolable law of the Church—if my fear of almighty
God had not stood in my way."
Thus although we did cease singing the divine offices for some time (though not without great sorrow), the Mighty Judge, whose commands I have not dared to disobey, sent the true vision into my soul. And forced by this, despite a grievous illness, I went to our superiors in Mainz, where I presented in writing the words I had seen in the True Light, just as God Himself instructed me. Thus might they know the will of God in this matter. There, in their presence, I tearfully sought pardon, and with weeping and humility asked for their compassion. Yet their eyes were so clouded that they could not look at me with any trace of compassion, and so, full of tears, I departed from them.
But a great number of people did have pity for us, although, despite their good will, they could offer us no real assistance. Yet my' faithful friend, the archbishop of Cologne, came to Mainz bringing with him a certain knight, a free man. And this man was willing to offer sufficient testimony that he and the aforementioned dead man had been partners in that transgression and that the two of them had likewise received absolution from excommunication, in the same place, and at the same hour, by the same priest. And that very priest was there present and verified the truth of this matter, and, acting in your name, obtained permission for us to celebrate the divine offices in security and peace until your return.15 Now, however, although we still have the utmost confidence in your compassion, most gracious lord, we have just received your letter from the synod forbidding us, once again, to celebrate those offices, a letter delivered to us by our superiors upon their return from Rome. Yet, having confidence in your paternal piety, I am assured that you never would have sent that letter if you had known the truth of the matter. And so, most gentle father, by the order which you yourself gave, we find ourselves again under that previous restriction and are suffering even greater grief and sadness.
Now, in a vision—and you have never, I remind you, given me trouble about my visions beforec—I have been ordered to say with heart and mouth:
It is better for me to fall into the hands of men, than to abandon the command of my God fcf. Dan 13.23]. Therefore, most gentle father, for the love of the Holy Spirit and the piety owed to the eternal Father, who sent his Word into the womb of the Virgin to blossom there4 for the salvation of mankind, I
The Letters of Hildegard ofBingen beseech you not to look down upon the tears of your grieving and wailing daughters who out of fear of God are enduring the trials and perplexities of this unjust injunction. May the Holy Spirit be so poured out on you that you may be moved to compassion for us and so that at the end of your life you may in return receive compassion.
Notes 1. At the Diet of Wiirzburg in 1165, Frederick attempted to force recognition of his anti-pope, Paschal. Conrad, archbishop of Mainz, fled the diet and joined forces with Pope Alexander. Whereupon Frederick replaced him as archbishop with this man,
Christian de Buch, who served in this capacity until his death in 1183. Serving also as chancellor to the emperor, Christian, who was a superb general, led Barbarossa's forces in his campaign against Alexander III. Later, however, he played an important role in bringing about the reconciliation of the emperor and the pope at the Peace of Venice in 1177.
2. Compassionate letter or not, the archbishop did not immediately lift the interdict, although some relief—however short-lived—was forthcoming to Hildegard and her nuns, as will be seen later in this letter.
3. Van Acker's text reads herefidelis arnicas tuus, but he notes that the fide/is amicus meus of the Patrologia may be the correct reading. In any case, the friend is Philip of Heinsberg, who was archbishop of Cologne in 1189.
4. Our "to blossom there" is a free rendering of Hildegard's ever-recurring viriditas. The Latin text reads qui pro salute hominis in suaui viriditate misit Verbum suum in Virginis uterum, a literal rendering of which would give "who sent His Word into the womb of the Virgin in sweet viridity."
24r Christian, Archbishop of Mainz, to Hildegard
At last, in March of 1179, only some six months before Hildegard's death, the archbishop writes from Rome making it possible for the interdict to be lifted.
Christian, archbishop of Mainz by the grace of God, to Hildegard, revered lady and beloved in Christ, and to all the brides of Christ who serve God with her, with a prayer that they might ascend from virtue unto virtue and see the God of gods in Zion fcf. Ps 83.8], Although in the wondrous and praiseworthy power of God and the mercy of our Savior, we are woefully inadequate, nay rather completely unworthy, yet, dearest lady in Christ, having the utmost confidence in your faithful
The Letters
prayers that we may be made worthy, we honor with our thanks Him from whom descends "every best gift, and every perfect gift. . . coming down from the Father of lights" [James 1.17]. For He has been pleased, and rightly so, with your soul and has illuminated it with His true and unfathomable light, and His continuing grace has been granted to your saintly devotion, to sit with Mary at the feet of the Lord [cf. Luke 10.39] and receive visions of the heavenly
Jerusalem.
Dearest lady in Christ, these obvious signs of your holy life and such amazing testimonies to the truth oblige us to obey your commands and to pay especial heed to your entreaties. Thus we are rightly obliged to cast the gaze of our heart to whatever we know has been granted to your saintly prayers.
And having the greatest confidence in your sanctity (next only to that we owe God), we hope, through the sacred odor of your prayers, to attain God's eternal grace. We also hope that this sinful soul of ours, made the more acceptable through your saintly intercession, will obtain the mercy of its Creator.
Hence, with regard to the tribulation and affliction which you and yours are enduring because of the suspension of the divine offices, the clearer your innocence in this matter becomes to us, the more firmly we sympathize with you. Nevertheless, the Church held that the man buried in your churchyard had incurred the sentence of excommunication while he was alive, and although some doubt remained concerning his absolution, the fact that you disregarded the outcry of the clergy and acted as if this would cause no scandal in the Church was a very dangerous act, since the statutes of the holy fathers are inviolable. You should have waited for definitive proof based on the suitable testimony of good men in the presence of the Church."
Yet we wholeheartedly sympathize with your affliction, as is only right, and therefore we have written back to the church at Mainz to this effect: we grant you the privilege of celebrating the divine offices again, on the condition that proof of the dead man's absolution has been established by the testimony of reliable men. In the meantime, saintly lady, if we have caused you annoyance in this matter, either out of guilt or ignorance, we earnestly beseech you not to withhold your compassion from one who seeks pardon. May you deign to pray the Father of mercies to present us unblemished to your sight and to the church at Mainz, for the glory of God and the honor of your church and for the salvation of our soul. May the Lord preserve your wholeness and holiness.1
Note 1. Our "wholeness and holiness" seeks to preserve Christian's pun sanitatem et sanctitatem.