Hildegard to the
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tributes alms to the poor. Thus he merits to hear the voice of his Lord saying to him: This person touches Me by performing his duty, and he anoints Me by his compassionate distribution of alms.
This monastery stands between two paths: one of them slimy, the other bright with sunlight. The slimy path is the pleasure of this world, which all the faithful must shun lest they be destroyed by it. When one has done this, the saints join in a symphony of praise to God, saying: This person does not abide in the putridity of this world's desire. A person who stands on the bright, sunny path and looks to God by fearing and loving Him will hear his Lord say: "Well done, good and faithful servant" [Matt 25.21ff]. The person who turns aside onto the slimy path, on the other hand, will encounter a great, calamitous peril, unless he tears himself away from that path.
Praise be to the blood of Christ that dresses His faithful in the breastplate of righteousness [cf. Eph 6.14] and all the armor of the virtues. For the blood of Christ restores His faithful to their place of refreshment. And you, O Jerusalem, rejoice, for you receive those who truly believe in the Passion of the Son of God.
And you, O dawn of Salvation, you are aglow with blessing, because Jerusalem preserves her sons in joy.
Therefore, the angels cry out their praises for these sons of jerusalem, saying: We gather the vintage of your works in the winepress [cf. Is 63.3], and so we bring you into our company. For Lucifer has fled like a serpent hiding in his hole.
Note 1. With a distinction being made, apparently, between the papacy and the Roman municipal government, or perhaps between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.
Thanks to Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Barbara Newman for suggestions.
Hildegard to the Congregation of Nuns 1161-62(?) An angry letter castigating the nuns for their moral laxity.
Poor little form of a woman that I am, I was weighed down heavily with sickness, because the Spirit of the Lord laid me low on a sickbed, and commanded me to say these words to the daughters of this monastery.
Surely, you do not suppose that you will receive the kingdom of God by feasting and drinking and wanton morals? No! You will receive the kingdom of
7 66 The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen God through denial of the body and contrition of the mind. I have prepared My table before you [cf. Ps 22.5] adorned with My resplendent crown, so that you may set a royal banquet on it—manna, beasts of the forest, birds of the air, pomegranates—a feast for those who inherit heaven. But you are neglecting to do your duty in this respect. For, on the one hand, you are setting before Me secular morals based on mere legalistic grounds, and, on the other, the discipline of the law of those who have been joined in matrimony.' This is not what I seek from you, because I have chosen you not for that garden but for my choice vineyard [cf.
Is 5.If; Jer 2.21]. I have endured this for eight years now. For five years I kept silent, but for three years I have scourged those, both inside your monastery and out, who have dishonored Me in the splendor of My crown.
Here is the meaning of all this. None of the faithful should suppose that he will acquire the glory of heaven by stuffing his belly or by complete abandonment to his pleasures. For those who desire to attain that glory must beat down the flesh in humility of the heart with goodwill, not bitter malice.
My table with My resplendent crown prepared for you so that you may set a royal banquet upon it stands for those angels with radiant crown, that is, with the refulgence of God's miracles, which are so brilliant before men that they marvel at the many things that have been prepared for the beatitude of those who live holy lives. These angels offer to their Creator the diligent, sanctified works of those who aspire to the angelic order. For angels do not set before God the dregs of secular works of those people who live to gratify carnal desires. They set before Him, rather, the works of those who, abandoning carnal desires, prostrate themselves on the ground for God's sake, and who, like the angels, praise
God continuously.
The manna symbolizes the obedience that God demanded of mankind, so that they might be obedient to God and to those prelates set over them by God.
Also, He instilled obedience in all the other creatures so that they might serve the benefit of mankind. God, not man, created mankind, and for this reason spiritual people are to serve God obediently, like the angels. Lucifer, however, cast obedience aside and revealed disobedience to mankind.
The beasts of the forest show that those who have renounced the world are to reject all pomp along with it Such people are like guests and pilgrims, and should, like beasts, avoid every secular way of life and all association with the world, as true hermits have done who shut themselves away from the world so that death might not enter through the windows of their eyes.
The birds of the air represent the precepts of St. Benedict and of other great teachers of the Catholic faith who drank deep of the Holy Spirit. Men live by these precepts as if they were not of the flesh.
The pomegranates declare the love of God in the hearts of those who have surrounded themselves with the aforesaid good and holy works, and who, by praying and weeping, gather unto themselves estimable virtues. These lap up the words of the saints by imitating their lives.
You, however, are not doing these things, for you turn instead to carnal desires, neglecting your proper duty. For in one way, a way that inclines to the world, you set before Me all sorts of fleshly desires like those whores who zealously and
The Letters
eagerly serve the world as they are trained to do, as has been said.b In the other way, you turn to the pleasurable desires of those who frequently sweat in carnal embraces, in which lovers please lovers. And I have never demanded this of you, neither by word, nor by writing, nor by command, for you have joined a spiritual— not a carnal—embrace. Yet you have become enslaved to carnal embraces, although
I did not choose you for the vain and soon-to-fade flowers of this rotting world. I brought you, instead, into the vineyard of true election and true bliss, so that in the highest election you could receive the reward of your labors.0
For eight years I endured the fact that you were acting like vain children, and that then you frolicked in your vanity in a pernicious way, and, finally, that you sinned in some aspect of that vanity. As if unaware of it, I feigned silence for five years. But when at last some of you with certain signs slapped Me in the face with it, I lifted up My hand against you, and for three years I chastised with various sorrows those both inside and outside this monastery, and with an unmistakable sign I struck down the grossness of their sins, because they had neglected the beauty of betrothal to Me.
In My zeal which "slew the firstborn of Egypt" [Ps 134.8], and which drowned Pharaoh in the Red Sea [cf. Ex 14.28; 15.4]—for despite the many wonders I showed him he despised Me—I rose up and laid low a certain individual so that she became partially aware of the penalties for her sins, which, she discovered, were mixed with fire and ice. I did this as an example to them, to those, that is, who were unwilling to acknowledge Me despite the many signs I revealed to their sight and hearing.
Let that person I scourged in My zeal, and the others who dwell here, beware lest in withdrawing from My way they turn back to their former transgressions and be drowned in the Red Sea, because from now on I will not suffer those previous sins. For it is necessary that they arise to the better part [cf. Luke 10.42] because it is God's will that they not abandon His law.
Now, therefore, O my daughters, rise up to Me immediately, before I bring pressure to bear on the spiritual people who tore my tunic and divided my garments [cf.John 19.23], and who abandoned the covenant I made with them [cf.
Deut 4.23]. O "woe to the sinful nation" [Is 1.4] that lies in the filthy streets and is always unchaste because of their lustful sins. In their overweening sinfulness, they are sucking the teats of pigs! Therefore, let them say. O Lord, You Who have provided food and clothing for man and have wiped away his sorrows by the blood of the Lamb [cf. Apoc 7.14; 22.14], see how a black wind mocks us and wishes to shake the seeds of holiness out of us. Cast that wind out of our midst, because the time has not yet come for schisms to run rampant, that time when the whole earth will be stripped of the garment of consecratioa
Now therefore, O my daughters, look and hear and flee from this dangerous wind. Run to your King. And when you have done this, bliss will pour forth blessings upon this house and its daughters like "the early and the latter rain"
[Hos 6.3], the bliss of the cherubim and seraphim and all the heavenly host as they gaze at the face of God. And virtues and the riches of the earth will multiply among them. And all who bless you will themselves increase in blessings.
May God look upon this place and never be forgetful of it.