Letter 1: Hildegard to Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux
The Letters I1 Hildegard to Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux 1146-47 Hildegard was forty-nine years old at the time she wrote this letter to the illustrious Bernard of Clairvaux. At once confident about her gift and hesitant about its implications, she writes to Bernard as her most famous contemporary, seeking support for her work. Here, as throughout her life, she is absolutely assured of her own divine inspiration and illumination by the Holy Spirit, a point that receives special stress here, of course, because of the nature of the request. Nevertheless, the tone of the letter is timid and diffident, a far cry indeed from the thundering tones she will later adopt to condemn the ecclesiastical and secular leaders of her time.
O2 venerable father Bernard, I lay my claim before you, for, highly honored by God, you bring fear to the immoral foolishness of this world and, in your intense zeal and burning love for the Son of God, gather men [cf. Luke 5.10] into Christ's army to fight under the banner of the cross against pagan savagery.3 I beseech you in the name of the Living God to give heed to my queries.
Father, I am greatly disturbed by a vision which has appeared to me through divine revelation, a vision seen not with my fleshly eyes but only in my spirit. Wretched, and indeed more than wretched in my womanly condition, I have from earliest childhood4 seen great marvels which my tongue has no power to express but which the Spirit of God has taught me that I may believe." Steadfast and gentle father, in your kindness respond to me, your unworthy servant, who has never, from her earliest childhood, lived one hour free from anxiety. In your piety and wisdom look in your spirit, as you have been taught by the Holy Spirit, and from your heart bring comfort to your handmaiden.
The Letters of Hildegard ofBingen Through this vision which touches my heart and soul like a burning flame, teaching me profundities of meaning, I have an inward understanding of the Psalter, the Gospels, and other volumes. Nevertheless, I do not receive this knowledge in German. Indeed, I have no formal training at all, for I know how to read only on the most elementary level, certainly with no deep analysis.5
But please give me your opinion in this matter, because I am untaught and untrained in exterior material, but am only taught inwardly, in my spirit. Hence my halting, unsure speech.1'
When I hear from your pious wisdom, I will be comforted. For with the single exception of a certain monk6 in whose exemplary life I have the utmost confidence, I have not dared to tell these things to anyone, since there are so many heresies abroad in the land,7 as I have heard. I have, in fact, revealed all my secrets to this man, and he has given me consolation, for these are great and fearsome matters.
Now, father, for the love of God, I seek consolation from you, that I may be assured. More than two years ago, indeed, I saw you in a vision, like a man looking straight into the sun, bold and unafraid. And I wept, because I myself am so timid and fearful. Good and gentle father, I have been placed in your care so that you might reveal to me through our correspondence whether I should speak these things openly or keep my silence, because I have great anxiety about this vision with respect to how much I should speak about what
I have seen and heard.c In the meantime, because I have kept silent about this vision, I have been laid low, bedridden in my infirmities, and am unable to raise myself up.
Therefore, I weep with sorrow before you. For in my nature, I am unstable because I am caught in the winepress,8 that tree rooted in Adam by the devil's deceit which brought about his exile into this wayward world. Yet, now, rising ' up, I run to you. And I say to you: You are not inconstant, but are always lifting up the tree, a victor in your spirit, lifting up not only yourself but also the whole world unto salvation. You are indeed the eagle gazing directly at the sun.
And so I beseech your aid, through the serenity of the Father and through His wondrous Word and through the sweet moisture of compunction, the Spirit of truth [cf. John 14.17; 16.13], and through that holy sound, which all creation echoes, and through that same Word which gave birth to the world, and through the sublimity of the Father, who sent the Word with sweet fruitfulness9 into the womb of the Virgin, from which He soaked up flesh, just as honey is surrounded by the honeycomb.10
And may that Sound, the power of the Father, fall upon your heart and lift up your spirit so that you may respond expeditiously to these words of mine, taking care, of course, to seek all these things from God—with regard to the person or the mystery itself—while you are passing through the gateway of your soul,d so that you may come to know all these things in God. Farewell, be strong in your spirit, and be a mighty warrior for God.
Amen.
The Letters
Notes 1. Within this first group (Letters 1—45r) is the correspondence with high Church officials: popes, archbishops, bishops, etc. On the classification of the Letters, see Introduction, pp. 17-18.
2. In some MSS this letter opens with "In the spirit of the mysteries of God, O venerable father Bernard."
3. The year is 1147, the time of the Second Crusade, of which St. Bernard was, of course, a leading proponent.
4. In one of the autobiographical sections of the Vita (see the edited version in Dronke, Women Writers, p. 231), Hildegard writes of these early visions: "In die third year of my life I saw so bright a light that my very soul trembled, but because I was still an infant, I was unable to say anything. Then in my eighth year I was dedicated to the spiritual life as an offering to God, and until my fifteenth I saw many things, and I spoke of such things in a very simple way, so that those who heard me wondered where all this had come from—and from whom. And I too wondered at myself, because although
I saw these things deep in my soul, I still retained outer vision, and I have never heard that said of any other human being. And so I hid that vision I saw within my soul as best I could. Also, I was quite ignorant of many things in the outer world on account of the chronic illness I have suffered from the time of my mother's milk up to the present day; it has weakened my body and worn down my spirits. Worn out by all these things,
I once asked my nurse if she saw anything besides external objects. "Nothing," she answered, for she did not see any of those things. Then, seized with great fear, I did not dare to reveal such matters to anyone. Nevertheless, by speaking or writing, I used to make many assertions about future events, and when I was fully in the sway of this vision
I would say many things totally unfathomable to those who listened. But when the force of the vision subsided somewhat—in the course of which I had acted far more childishly than suited my years—I blushed profusely and frequently wept, and many times I would have gladly kept quiet, if I could have. Still, because of my fear of other people, I did not dare to tell anyone how I saw.
5. Our rendering of this difficult passage is, we are fully aware, a radical departure from previous readings. In the past, the passage has been interpreted, in the most radical form, to mean that Hildegard did not understand German at all, and, more moderately, that she could speak and understand the language orally but could not read it—neither of which could be true from what we know of her from other sources. In our rendering, the German language is, as it were, merely incidental to the passage. Hildegard's main point in this entire section has been that her learning is of the spirit, wholly inward, and that she herself is ignorant and unlearned (whatever degree of credence we wish to give to this humility formula), and this continues to be her stress here. One might note, for example, that litteras, not Teutonica lingua, is the antecedent oiquas. It is litteras ("letters,"
"learning") that she does not know, an acknowledgment that leads quite naturally in the next clause to her remark about reading only on the simplest level, not at all in abscisione textus. One might note, too, that in his answer to her Bernard refers to her interior eruditio. The muddying Teutonica, one suspects, gets into the passage at this point—very awkwardly, to be sure—merely because she is frequently asked, as she is later by Guibert of Gembloux, whether she receives her visions in German or in Latin.
6. This was Volmar of St. Disibod, who was Hildegard's early teacher, and who remained her confidant, secretary, amanuensis, and friend for many years until his death in 1173. Speaking in the Scivias, the Living Light says, "Through my love she searched
The Letters ofHildegard ofEingen her soul for one who would run the way of salvation. And she found him and loved him, knowing that he was a faithful man, like to herself in those labors that lead to me. She held him fast, and with the highest zeal they worked together on all these things so that my hidden mysteries might be revealed."
7. schismata SUM in bominibus. This is not the schism in the Church (which, in any case, did not begin until 1159), as her qualifying in hominibus, sicut audio dicere homines makes clear. She probably has reference to the various schismatic sects with which the twelfth century was rife. When Pope Kugenius III came into France in 1147, for example, he was shocked at the large number of heretics there, and, in fact, he commissioned the recipient of this letter, Bernard, to deal with them. See S. Runciman, The Medieval
Mankhee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (New York: Viking Press, 1961), p. 119.
8. Hildegard's expression here is in torculari arbore, an interesting example of her sometimes intricately complex and interwoven imagery. Here the image seems to be a fusion of the tree of the garden of Eden and the winepress (where the grapes of wrath are trod) of Isaiah 63.3, already being used in the twelfth century as a figure of the crucifixion. Cf. the following from the Scivias (I.iii.31.623ft): "A bright light appeared for the assurance and salvation of mankind: the Son of God dressed himself in the poverty of a human body, and shining like a burning star in the midst of shadowy clouds,
He was placed on the winepress where wine without the sediment of fermentation was to be pressed out. For the cornerstone itself fell on the winepress, and produced such wine that it gave forth the finest fragrance of sweetness."
9. The word here is viriditate, a totally untranslatable term, as one might expect.
"Greenness" or "greening" (as it is sometimes rendered), for example, certainly cannot render the immensity of the term for Hildegard. Viriditas is of the very essence of life, and larger than life in Hildegard's view of the universe. It might perhaps be best rendered as "life-force," for it, assuredly, has that sense in her imposing cosmological scheme of things. For further on viriditas, see C. Meier, "Die Bedeutung der Farben im
Werk Hildegards von Bingen," Fruhmitteralterliche Studien 6 (1972), pp. 280-90; B.
Newman, ed. Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the Symphonia Arw.onie Celestium Revelationum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 38f; Bowie and Davies, Mystical
Writings, pp. 3 Iff.
10. The image of the womb of the Virgin as a honeycomb or beehive derives ultimately from the notion of bees giving birth virginally. The idea is given full expression in the following stanza of a poem from the so-called Cambridge Songs preserved in a MS of the eleventh century:
Nulla inter aves similis est api, que talem tipum gerit castitatis nisi que Christum baiulavit alvo inviolata.
The Letters
lr Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux to Hildegard 1146-47 St. Bernard's response to Hildegard is short and (it must be confessed) rather perfunctory. A short time later, however, he speaks in Hildegard's favor before Pope Eugenius at the synod of Trier, and helps persuade him to give approval to her work.
Brother Bernard, called Abbot of Clairvaux, offers to Hildegard, beloved daughter in Christ, whatever the prayer of a sinner can accomplish.
It is perhaps to be attributed to your humility that you appear to have a higher regard for our poor abilities than I myself would admit. All the same, I have made some effort to respond to your letter of love, although the press of business forces me to respond more briefly than I would have liked.
We rejoice in the grace of God which is in you. And, further, we most earnestly urge and beseech you to recognize this gift as grace and to respond eagerly to it with all humility and devotion, with the knowledge that "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble" [James 4.6; I Pet 5.5].1
But, on the other hand, when the learning and the anointing (which reveals all things to you) are within, what advice could we possibly give?2
And so we ask all the more, and humbly beseech, that you remember us before God, and not only us but also those who are bound to us in spiritual community.3
Notes 1. This is a theme (with the same biblical verses being cited) that Hildegard is to hear again and again. The stress on humility is not, of course, unusual, but it seems particularly prominent in exhortations to Hildegard, because of the problem of gender.
See Newman, Sister of Wisdom, esp. pp. 34—41.
2. At about the time Bernard was responding to Hildegard's letter, Pope Eugenius was already receiving word of Hildegard's visions, and a copy of an early portion of the Scivias was sent to him. Eugenius read from this work to the prelates assembled at the synod of Trier (November 1147-Febraary 1148), and at just this point, Bernard interceded on Hildegard's behalf, with the happy result that Eugenius wrote Hildegard encouraging her to continue her work. Some MSS add the following sentence at this point: "It is said that you see celestial secrets, and, with the illumination of the Holy
Spirit, learn things beyond the sight of mortals."
3. Some MSS add the following as a conclusion of this letter: "Since your spirit is joined to God, we are confident that you can be of great service to us and come to our aid. For 'the continual prayer of a just man availeth much' [James 5.16]. We, for our