Hildegard to the Abbess
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen If a place or means of serving you is denied me, my affection for you still has a remedy: letters between the two of us will quickly assure me of your wellbeing.' Know, dearest lady, that although steep mountains, chasms, and floods keep me from your presence, my heart is fully joined to you in the benevolence of perfect faith and love. Acquaintance with you is greatly to be desired, and I ascribe the granting of this desire—which has led to the salvation of the one desiring—not to my own merits, but to God's gracious mercy, for He deals mercifully with His faithful.1
Yet please do not think that I am abusing your friendship merely because I enjoy it so fully when, by the grace of God called to the sweetness of internal delight, I dare—or am able—to confer with Him intimately. In the name of the consolation of that love, I ask you to let me know by letter in accordance with my petition whether you will bear me in your memory.
By your gracious leave, I greet our sisters faithfully and lovingly with the obedience of the service I owe them, for they have stood firmly by me in the spirit of God's might and strength, and, if I may say so, by the example of your good deeds, they kept me safe and sound when I was falling into the jaws of death.
Farewell.
Note 1. The English here can scarcely aspire to the emphasis on longing and gratitude in this passage with its employment of varying forms of the Latin for "hope"
(Optandam uestri notitiam et in salutem optantis feliciter exoptatam) and for "mercy"
(sed gratuite pietati Dei qui pius pie cum suis operatur fidelibus).
185r Hildegard to the Abbess Before 1173 Hildegard exhorts the abbess to be merciful and patient
0 you who are a daughter of God because God fashioned the first human being, approach your Father, and look to Him so that you may do His will, for He created you. Recently, He admonished you by chastising you, and for a reason which I see in you, He will continue to admonish you about your bad habits, which you must correct.
Look to Him, make manifest all your ways to Him, and imitate the dove of mercy. For the dove acknowledges every good work, and banishes the sorrow of