Hildegard to the Abbot Withelo
The Letters
ers, but your monastery should be a place of sanctuary for them. But if it is your will to persevere in gnashing your teeth at us with your verbal assaults, then you will be like the Amalekites [cf. I Sam 30.If] and like Antiochus, who, as it is written, stripped the temple of the Lord bare [cf. I Macch 1.23f; 6.12]. But if any among you say to yourselves maliciously: We intend to diminish their holdings—then "I Who Am" [Ex 3.14] say that you are the worst sort of despoilers. If you attempt to take from them the shepherd who applies spiritual medicine,2 then again I say to you that you are like the sons of Belial [cf. I Sam 2.12; 10.27], and that in this matter you are not considering the justice of God, and, for this reason, the justice of God will destroy you. And when with these words, I, a poor little form of a woman, sought from that abbot and his brothers the autonomy of our monastery and the unencumbered possession of my daughters' endowments, —
Notes 1. At this point, some MSS add the passage printed in the appendix to this letter.
2. That is, the provost and spiritual advisor, Volmar.
St. Georgen
Hildegard to the Abbot Withelo Before 1153 Hildegard writes in answer, apparently, to a query from the abbot about resigning his position.
In the mirror of true vision I have seen you very troubled, stirred up like a turbid cloud when threatening air moves, caught up in wind and rain. Such are the thoughts of your mind, troubled as it is over the matter you have embraced in the core of your heart.
And I heard a voice saying of you: A man who toils with plow and oxen in arid land says to himself: I cannot endure this difficult labor because it is too hard for me. And so he goes into the desert [cf. Luke 11.24], where delicate flowers grow uncultivated by human effort, but which are being suffocated by unwholesome weeds. And again he says to himself: I will put aside my plow, and pull up these useless weeds. What is the good in this? Now, O man, consider who is better the one toiling in the earth with a useful plow, or the one who pulls up useless weeds growing amid the flowers.
I saw also that this matter you are asking about is unwholesome for you.
Therefore, stay in your position with your hand to the plow. May God help you in all your needs, and not permit you to toil in vain.