Letter 31: Eberhard, Bishop of Bamberg, to Hildegard
The Letters ofHildegard ofBingen seminary attached to Bamberg cathedral to this group of dedicated nuns. Thus this generous act of intercession by Hildegard had a happy result, for this new convent became a thriving community.
A certain man rose up in the morning and planted a vineyard. Later, because of much dissension, he turned his eyes to foreign places, and his desire was fulfilled.
Now, O father, look to your daughter Gertrude, who was called forth, a pilgrim, from her own country, just like Abraham, who also left his land. She has given up everything and bought the pearl of great price [cf. Matt 13.46].
Now, however, her mind is being squeezed dry by great anxiety, like a grape in the winepress. Therefore, for the love of Him who was before the beginning and has filled all things with compassion, help her as much as you can, so that the vineyard in this daughter may not be destroyed.
Eberhard, Bishop of Bamberg, to Hildegard 1163-64 Eberhard seeks information from Hildegard on a fine theological point. He is currently engaged in a Christological quarrel with Gerhoch of Reichersberg, and he seeks ammunition for his argument from Hildegard, which he receives at length, for Hildegard takes the question very seriously.
Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg by the grace of God, although unworthy, your devoted servant with prayers for eternal blessedness, to Hildegard, venerable sister and superior of St. Rupert.
By favor of heavenly grace, the report of your sanctity resounds in the ears of people everywhere so that we can say in all truth that "we are the good odour of Christ unto God" [II Cor 2.15]. But also "the Lord hath looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see" if there be any that understand
[Ps 13.2] or any who seek God in you. And so, perfumed by the fragrance'1 of your good reputation, we run enthusiastically to the Lord whom you venerate and reverently consult. You surely will not deny to me alone what you have offered to so many. Now, since we are passing through on our way from the imperial court, we wish to submit the following matter to be expounded through your spiritual love, since you are imbued by the Holy Spirit: eternity is an attribute of the Father, equality an attribute of the Son, with the Holy
Spirit being the connection between the two.1' We earnestly desire to have this matter explained through God's revelation to you.
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May the Lord be with you, so that we also may be helped by your prayers.
31r Hildegard to Eberhard, Bishop of Bamberg 1163-64 This letter is really a theological treatise dealing with the various attributes of the persons of the Trinity.
He Who Is, and from Whom nothing is hidden, says, O shepherd, do not allow the sweet flow of the odor of balsam dry up in you, that vitality which must be given to the foolish who do not have the breasts of maternal compassion to suck, and who, therefore, lack sustenance. Therefore, offer the lamp of the King to your people, so that they might not be scattered in bitterness, and you yourself rise up, living, in its light.
Father, I, a poor little woman, am able to expound upon the question you asked me, because I have looked to the True Light,1 and I am sending along to you the answer I saw and heard in a true vision—not my words, I remind you, but those of the True Light, which has no imperfection.
Eternity is the essential quality of the Father." That is to say, nothing can be added or subtracted from it, for eternity is like a wheel, which has neither beginning nor end. Thus, in the Father, before the beginning of the world, eternity is. Eternity always is and always has been. What is eternity? It is God.
For eternity is not eternity except in Perfect Life. Therefore, God lives in eternity. Life proceeds not from mortality, but life is in life. Thus a tree grows only from its life-giving sap, and not even a stone is without its moisture, and every living thing has its own life force. For eternity is itself alive, and is not without the ability to produce life.1'
How is this so? It was the function of the Word of the Father to bring forth every created thing. And so the Father is not idle in his great might.
Hence, God is called the Father, because all things are born from Him. And so, once again, eternity is an essential quality of the Father, because He was
Father before the beginning, and was eternal before the inception of His magnificent works, all of which He foresaw eternally. But the state of the Father is not the state of man, which is sometimes uncertain, sometimes past, sometimes future, sometimes new, sometimes old, but that which is in the Father is always stable.
The Father is brightness, and that brightness has radiance, and that radiance has fire: and they are all one. Whoever does not believe this does not see
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen God, because he is seeking to make a division in an indivisible God. Indeed, the works which God established no longer have their undivided essence, since man has brought about divisions.
Brightness is Paternity, from which all things have their being and by which they are all embraced, for they derive from its power. That same power made man, and breathed the breath of life into him. But also in that same power man has his own potency. How? Flesh produces flesh, and good propagates that which is good: the good is spread abroad by spiritual conversation and is increased by good example in another person.' These powers are in man both carnally and spiritually, because one thing proceeds from another. Alan highly prizes his useful works, because he conceives them in his mind and brings them into effect by his actions. So, too, it is God's will that His power be manifested in all his creatures, because they are His work.
Radiance gives eyes, and that Radiance which is the Son gave eyes when he said, "Let there be." At that moment all things appeared physically in the Living Eye. And fire, which is God, permeates these two terms, because it is impossible to have brightness without radiance. And if they did not have fire, there would be neither brightness nor radiance. Flame and light lie hidden in fire; otherwise it would not be fire.
Equality is the essential characteristic of the Son.'1 How? All creatures were in the Father before the beginning of time, all in the order He Himself had ordained. Afterward, die Son gave them their physical form. How? It is like a person who conceives an idea of a great work, and then makes it explicit by his word so that it comes forth in praiseworthy form.
The Father ordains, the Son puts into effect.c For the Father has ordained all things in Himself, and the Son has brought them to completion. And the light which was in the beginning is from that eternal light before the beginning of the world, and this light, whose radiance is from the Father, is the Son, through Whom all things were made. And the Son clothed Flimself in the garment of mankind, whom he had formed from the mud, the garment which, before, had no bodily form/ Thus God saw all his works before Him as light, and when He said "Let there be," He gave each kind its own proper garment.
Afterward, God humbled Himself to his own work, and in this way equality to mankind is an essential quality of the Son of God, for He himself put on the garment of humanity, just as the works of God clothed themselves in their physical forms. For God had foreknowledge of all the works which he generated, and, therefore, He stooped into the lowliness of humanity to become a man, because divinity is so perfect that, if He had not clothed Himself in humanity, He could have tolerated nothing in man which opposes the good, since "all things were made by him: and without him was made nothing"
[John 1.3]. All things perceived by sight, touch, and taste were made by Him, and He foresaw tliat all these things were necessary for mankind, some for the embracing of divine love, some for reverence, some for knowledge, some for discipline, and some for discretion.
"And without him was made nothing." This "nothing" is insolent pride.
It is an altitude of mind which has regard only for itself, and has faith in nothing. For its wishes are the opposite of God's, and it thinks only of its own
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fabrications. It is full of darkness, because it despised the light of truth, and because it set in motion that which it could not bring to completion. Thus pride is nothing, because it was neither made nor created by God.s It had its beginning in the first angel, when he looked at his own refulgence and became arrogant, because he did not see the Source of his brightness. But he said to himself: I want to be the Lord, and I will acknowledge no one else as Lord.
And, immediately, his glory vanished, and he became the prince of Hell.
Then God gave that first angel's glory to His other son, man, and made him so powerful that all created things are subject to him. Thus man was endowed with such great power that, through it all, he never lost his pristine glory. But like the blasphemy by which the devil rejected God, man in his foolishness wanted to be like God in honor, that is, to be as God is. Nevertheless, man did not cast aside that love which he knew God to be. Thus the essence of the devil is absolute darkness, because he did not wish the brightness of God to exist. Adam, on the other hand, did wish the brightness of God to exist, and indeed longed to be in His presence. Hence, man's essence is perfect, because something of that original light remains in him—although he is filled with misery and woe.h The connection between eternity and equality is the Holy Spirit.' The Holy Spirit is a fire, but it is not an extinguishable fire that sometimes blazes up and sometimes is put out. It permeates eternity and equality, and binds the two into one, just as a person binds together a bundle of sticks (which, if not bound, flies all asunder). And it is like a blacksmith who unites the two materials of bronze and makes them one through fire. It is a sword brandished in every direction. The Holy Spirit reveals eternity and enkindles equality, joining them into one. The Holy Spirit is fire and life in eternity and equality, because God is living. The sun is radiant with a blazing light, and the fire burns in it. It illuminates the whole world, and it appears as a single entity. But any thing devoid of life-force is dead, just as a limb cut off from a tree becomes withered, because it no longer has the stuff of life in it.'
The Holy Spirit is the uniting factor and the life-giving force, for without the Holy Spirit eternity would not be eternity, nor would equality be equality.k
The Holy Spirit is in both, and the three are one in divinity, that is, God is one.
Rational expression, also, has three forces: sound, word, and breath.1 The Son is in the Father the same way that a word is in a sound, and the Holy Spirit is in each, just as breath is found both in sound and in word. And these three persons are one God, as I said earlier. The essential quality of the Father is eternity, for there was no one before Him, since eternity (unlike the works of God) had no beginning. The essential quality of the Son is equality, because the Son has never been separated from the Father, nor the Father from the Son. But the essential quality of the Holy Spirit is the connection between the two, for the Son has always remained in the Father, and the Father with the Son, since the Holy Spirit is the fiery life in them, and they are one.
And it is written: "the spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world" [Wis 1.7]. The meaning of this Scripture is that all created things, visible and invisible, have life imbued with the spirit, and those created things that man does
The Letters of Hildegard ofBingen not know, his intellect searches out until he does. For from the sap, flowers; from flowers, fruit. The clouds have their course, and the moon and stars burn with fire. The tree brings forth flowers through invigorating sap, and water, in its rarer essence, has the ability both to make the wind moist and to bring forth rivulets. Even the earth exhales moisture."1
For all created things have visible and invisible qualities, and that which is seen is weak, but that which is not seen is strong and vital. Since man cannot see these invisible qualities with his eyes, he seeks to grasp them with his intellect. These are the forces of the works of the Holy Spirit.
"And that, which containeth all things" [Wis 1.7]. What is the subject of this quotation? Man. In what way does he contain all things? By ruling, by using, by commanding. God gave him this capacity in accordance with His will.
"Hath knowledge of the voice" [Wis 1.7]. This capacity is rationality which utters sound with a voice. The voice is body; rationality, soul; the warmth of the air, fire; and they are all one." Thus when rationality is heard by speaking, by creating with the voice, all its works are brought to perfection, and therefore it has the power to create, because as it commands, so will it be.
Consequently, none of the works of God are in vain.2
If someone had a jar full of money, he would be very glad. But if the jar were empty, he would consider it worthless. There is emptiness in all the works of wicked men, and they flee from the fire of the Holy Spirit. At first, through the devil's instigation, they delight in sinning. But when a person realizes that his wicked deeds are worthless and rejects them, he is like the prodigal son, who, after his hunger, remembered his father's bread, and said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee" [Luke 15.18, 21]: "Against heaven," because I am heavenly in my rationality; "and before thee," because I know that you are God. Then he repudiates the devil, and at last chooses God as his
Lord. Thereupon, all the celestial harmonies stand in awe at the confounding of the devil's wickedness, for that which they had earlier considered useless mud, they now regard as a pillar of cloud supreme in its usefulness, and that which they had at first seen as worthless, they now regard as very beautiful, because they deem worthless all the wickedness of the devil." For there is no usefulness in such wicked deeds, but usefulness is achieved through good works. These are the works of the Holy Spirit.
Now, O father and shepherd of the people, may God grant that you reach the light where you will receive the knowledge of true blessedness.
Notes 1. Clearly, this is what Eberhard expected from Hildegard, an answer concerning metaphysical matters directly through inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a means, in his mind apparently, superior to those provided by the abstract logic of the budding scholastic method.
2. What Barbara Newman (Sister of Wisdom, p. 20) writes of Hildegard's Liber divinorwrn openan applies equally well to the seer's cosmological vision expressed in this