Letter 8: Hildegard to Pope Anastasius
The Letters
royal city which we call Magdeburg." We are indebted to Timothy Reuter for calling
Widukind to our attention through E-mail from Munich.
3. Since we know that this letter concerns Heinrich, archbishop of Mainz, the sense of this enigmatic language seems to be that those churchmen clamoring for Heinrich's ouster—since they, of course, would be Heinrich's subordinates—should themselves be chastised and brought into line.
4. There is a problem of ambiguity here: Hildegard's inattentive shifting from the one voice (God's) to the other (mankind's) renders the last sentence of the paragraph, at least on a first reading, meaningless. At least two scribes were troubled by the sense and sought to correct it, for two of the MSS addpotest ("can it") at the end. Hildegard apparently intended the "voice" in this last sentence to be mankind's, not God's as it would appear to be from the context. We have handled the problem by simply making explicit the seeming intention.
Hildegard to Pope Anastasius 1153-54 Anastasius was already in his eighties when he was chosen pope in 1153, elected on the very day of the death of his predecessor Eugenius. He himself died the very next year, in 115 4, his period of office lasting from 12 July 11S 3 to 3 December 1154. The reason for Hildegard's harshness toward this pope—at least, so one gathers from the scanty evidence available—is his reputation (probably undeserved) for coming to terms too easily with the emperor, and compromising away ecclesiastical privilege.
O you who are the estimable defense and the bulwark of a beautifully adorned city, which has been established as the bride of Christ, hear Him who is eternal and does not grow weary.
You, O man, who are too tired, in the eye of your knowledge, to rein in the pomposity of arrogance among those placed in your bosom, why do you not call back the shipwrecked who cannot rise from the depths without help?
And why do you not cut off the root of evil which is choking out the good and beneficial plants of sweet taste and delightful aroma?1 You are neglecting the King's daughter who was entrusted to you, that is, heavenly Justice herself.
You are allowing this King's daughter to be thrown to the ground: her beautiful crown and tunic torn asunder by the crudeness of those hostile people who bark like dogs and who, like chickens trying to sing at night, raise up their ineffectual voices. They are charlatans, crying out, ostensibly, for peace, but, all the while, biting each other in their hearts, like a dog that wags its tail among those known to him, but bites the honorable knight indispensable to the king's household. Why do you put up with depraved people who are
The Letters of Hildegard ofBingen blinded by foolishness and who delight in harmful things, like a hen which cackles in the night and terrifies herself? Such people are completely useless.
Listen, therefore, O man, to the One who loves the power of discernment, so that He himself has established the great instrument of uprightness to fight against evil. But you are not exercising this faculty when you do not root out the evil which seeks to choke the good. Rather, you are allowing evil to raise itself up arrogantly; and you do this because of your fear of those wicked people who lie in wait in the night, and who love the money of death more than the King's beautiful daughter, Justice.
And yet all the works of God are resplendently bright. Hear, O man. For the heavenly Father, before the beginning of the world, intoned in his secret:
O my son. And the sphere of the world arose, taking up this word intoned by the Father, while the various species of creatures still lay hidden in the darkness.
In that same word that was written, "And God said: Let there be" [Gen 1. 6], the various kinds of creatures came forth. Thus through the word of the Father and because of the word of the Father all creatures were made by the will of the Father.
And God sees all things and foreknows all things. But evil, neither by rising nor falling, is able of itself to make anything or create anything or do anything, because it is nothing but a false choice, an opinion contrary to God's will, and it is through this wrong choice that one does evil.
But God sent his Son into the world, so that He might overcome the devil (who knew evil by embracing it, and made it desirable to mankind) and so that those who had perished through evil might be redeemed. Wherefore God rejects perverse works, like fornication, murder, theft, rebellion, tyranny, and the deceitfulness of sinful people, since He has crushed these things through the Son who has completely scattered the spoils of hell's tyrant.
Wherefore, O man, you who sit on the papal throne, you despise God when you embrace evil. For in failing to speak out against the evil of those in your company, you are certainly not rejecting evil. Rather, you are kissing it.
And so the whole world is being led astray through unstable error, simply because people love that which God has cast down.
And you, O Rome, when you are lying at the point of death, you will be so shaken that the strength of your feet, upon which you have stood so far, will no longer sustain you. For you do not love the King's daughter, that is,
Justice, with a blazing passion, but with a dull sloth, so that, in fact, you banish her from your presence. Indeed, she is ready to flee from you, if you do not call her back. Yet the high mountains2 will offer help to you still, raising you up and supporting you with the branches of lofty trees, so that your nobility
(that is, the majesty of your betrothal to Christ) will not be completely destroyed. Thus you will retain some vestiges of your beauty, until the snow of the morals of hostile derision comes, which ends in insanity. Beware, therefore, of becoming entangled in pagan rites, lest you fall.3 Now, hear Him who lives and will never die. The world is now lascivious, and will later become sad.
Then will come such great terror that people will not care whether they are killed or not. In the midst of all this: times of wantonness, times of contrition,
The Letters
times of the thunder and lightning of iniquity. For the eye rages, the nose robs/ the mouth kills. Yet healing will come forth from the heart when the dawn appears like the splendor of the first sunrise. Those things which will follow in the new desire and the new fervor, however, must not be spoken now.4
But He who is great and without flaw has now touched a humble dwelling, so that it might see a miracle and form unknown letters and utter an unknown tongue. And this was said to that little habitation: You have written these things in a language given to you from above, rather than in ordinary human speech, since it was not revealed to you in that form, but let him who has the pumice stone not fail to polish it and make it intelligible to mankind.51'
But, you, O man, since you are clearly the shepherd appointed by God, rise up and run quickly to Justice, so that you will not be accused before the great physician of failing to cleanse his sheepfold and of neglecting to anoint his flock with oil. Still, when a man's will has not consented to wrongdoing and when he himself has not been overwhelmed by desire, he will not be condemned absolutely. The flaw of ignorance can be cleansed by the lash.
Therefore, you, O man, stand on the strait path, and God will save you and bring you back into the abode of blessing and election, and you will live forever.
Notes 1. The image of the garden with fragrant plants is one of Hildegard's favorite tropes in the letters. Cf. Scivias I.ii.741ff.
2. Here, once again, mountains = prelates.
3. Van Acker's text actually reads "The nose tastes or has understanding" (sapit), a reading that ill-fits the context oi violence here. We have translated "The nose robs"
(rapit), which is the reading of two MSS—although, it must be admitted, the sense is scarcely improved.
4. Following Christ's own admonition (Acts 1.7), Hildegard regards some events in the salvation history to come, as well as some present mysteries, as forbidden to be revealed, at least completely, and warns against rash inquiry into things not to be searched out. See, for example, Scivias III.vii.474-80: "Anyone who searches out what
God was before He created the world or what God will be after the last day will be cut off from his portion of the sacred communion, for such things are not to be known by a finite mortal weighed down with sins." See also Scivias III.x. 171ff and III.xi.826ff.
5. This letter is cited in the Vita (II.i.14), but the writer apparently found this passage all too enigmatic and attempted to bring some clarity to it by adding "in Latina lingua."