Hildegard to the Monk Guibert
The Letters
for their needs. For my part, I especially pray and beseech through the name and love of Jesus Christ, that you double your prayers and petitions for me, your humble servant, so that God's compassion may be the more gracious to me the more disobedient to His commands and useless I am, and thus all the more indebted to Him. For so far I have lived a life of bestial sensuality. I am a priest wearing the monk's habit, but I act without priestly purity and without the obedience and humility incumbent on a monk, and thus am bringing on myself a harsher judgment. While singing hymns in the choir or assisting at the holy altar, my mind is forever turning to foul and disgusting matters, idle things. I do not revere fully the very present majesty of God nor the presence of His angels.
Set in a very dangerous place in the midst of spiritual enemies, I am indolent and sluggish, neither prepared to resist the enemy nor bold enough to take up arms against him. I am the foolishly secure person who owed 10,000 talents [cf.
Matt 18.2 3ff], without fear of the account which I must some day give to the Judge, or of the chains or prison which awaits the sluggish.
And so pray for me that the compassion of almighty God chasten me with a proper, salutary fear, and compel me to understand the many great dangers I am in, and, once they are understood, to fear them utterly. Pray that with some restorative bitterness He will totally dissolve the pact I have made with my flesh and this present life, for it is a bargain sweetened to my ill. Pray that He will cause me—even though forced and compelled—to flee unto Him, and pray that He will take this fugitive into the open arms of His favor. Also, please pray for that friend of mine I mentioned, without giving his name, in my earlier letter.
Pray that he cease his aimless wandering and that the grace of His spirit enkindle in him an appetite for the eternal.
Farewell in Christ, reverend mother.
Notes 1. August 15.
2. On the crowns and other ornaments worn by Hildegard's nuns, see the hostile report by Tengswich in Letter 52.
103r Hildegard to the Monk Guibert
Hildegard writes in answer to the insistent Guibert of Gembloux. Much of this letter is taken up with answers to some, though not all, of the questions posed by Guibert.
The words I speak are not my own, nor any human being's. I merely report those things I received in a supernal vision. O servant of God, you gaze into the mir-
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen ror of faith in order to know God, and through the formation of man in whom
God established and sealed His miracles, you have become a son of God. For just as a mirror, which reflects all things, is set in its own container, so too the rational soul is placed in the fragile container of the body. In this way, the body is governed in its earthly life by the soul, and the soul contemplates heavenly things through faith. Hear, then, O son of God, what the unfailing Light says.
Man is both heavenly and earthly [cf. I Cor 15.47–49]: through the good knowledge of the rational soul, he is heavenly; and through the bad, fragile and full of darkness. And the more he recognizes the good in himself, the more he loves God. For if someone looks in a mirror and finds that his face is very dirty, he will want to wash it clean. So too, if he understands that he has sinned and been caught up in vain pursuits, let him groan and cry out with the Psalmist because his good knowledge makes him aware that he is polluted: "O daughter of Babylon, miserable" [Ps 136.8]. Here is the sense of this verse: human desire was tainted through the poison of the serpent. Thus it is impoverished and wretched, for despite the fact that it tastes the glory of eternal life through its good knowledge, it nevertheless fails to seek that glory from God with true desire—for which reason it has a low reputation in philosophical thought.a But blessed is he who understands that he has his life from God, and blessed is he whose knowledge teaches him that God created and redeemed him. For through this divinely given freedom, he breaks the evil habit of his sins, and poor as he is in celestial riches, he dashes his wretchedness upon the rock that is the foundation of beatitude.b For when a person knows that he is filthy and cannot resist tasting sin whatsoever, black birds completely befoul him. But then also the rational soul, which he neither sees nor knows, leads him to put his faith in God by believing. Yet although he knows that this is his nature, and knows too that he will live forever, he still cannot keep himself from sinning over and over again.
And so: O how lamentable is the fact that God makes such fragile vessels which cannot refrain from sin, save through the grace of God. And yet how wondrous that these same vessels are sometimes adorned with the stars of His miracles.
For even Peter, who vowed vehemently that he would never deny the Son of God, was himself not safe [cf. Matt 26.33ff; Mark 14.29ff; Luke 22.33ff; John
13.37f]. The same was true of many other saints, who fell in their sins. Yet these were all, afterward, made more useful and more perfect than they would have been if they had not fallen.
O faithful servant, I—poor little woman that I am—say these words to you again in a true vision: If God were to raise my body as He does my spirit in this vision, my mind and heart would still not be free from fear, because, although I have been cloistered from childhood, I am fully aware that I am only human.
For many wise men have been so miraculously inspired that they revealed many mysteries, and yet they fell, because in their vanity they ascribed all these miracles to their own power. On the other hand, those who have drunk deeply of God's wisdom in elevation of spirit while still regarding themselves as nothing—these have become the pillars of heaven. Paul was such a one, for although he was a far better preacher than all the other disciples, he still counted himself as nothing
The Letters
[cf. II Cor 12.11; Eph 3.8]. Likewise, the evangelist John was mild and humble, and therefore drank deeply of divine revelations [cf. Apoc 1.1—2],
And how could God work through me if I were not aware that I am but a poor little creature? God works His will for the glory of His name, not for the glory of any earthly person. Indeed I always tremble in fear, since I know that I cannot safely rely on my own innate capacity.c But I stretch out my hands to God so that He might raise me up like a feather,1 which, having no weight of its own, flies on the wind. Still, I cannot fully understand those things I see, as long as I am an invisible spirit in a fleshly body, because man was injured in both these faculties.2
I am now more than seventy years old. But even in my infancy, before my bones, muscles, and veins had reached their full strength, I was possessed of this visionary gift in my soul, and it abides with me still up to the present day. In these visions my spirit rises, as God wills, to the heights of heaven and into the shifting winds, and it ranges among various peoples, even those very far away.
And since I see in such a fashion, my perception of things depends on the shifting of the clouds and other elements of creation.d Still, I do not hear these things with bodily ears, nor do I perceive them with the cogitations of my heart or the evidence of my five senses. I see them only in my spirit, with my eyes wide open, and thus I never suffer the defect of ecstasy in these visions.3 And, fully awake, I continue to see them day and night.4 Yet my body suffers ceaselessly, and I am racked by such terrible pains that I am brought almost to the point of death. So far, however, God has sustained me.
The light that I see is not local and confined. It is far brighter than a lucent cloud through which the sun shines. And I can discern neither its height nor its length nor its breadth. This light I have named "the shadow of the Living Light,"e and just as the sun and moon and stars are reflected in water, so too are writings, words, virtues, and deeds of men5 reflected back to me from it.
Whatever I see or learn in this vision I retain for a long period of time, and store it away in my memory. And my seeing, hearing, and knowing are simultaneous, so that I learn and know at the same instant. But I have no knowledge of anything I do not see there, because I am unlearned. Thus the things I write are those that I see and hear in my vision, with no words of my own added. And these are expressed in unpolished Latin, for that is the way I hear them in my vision, since I am not taught in the vision to write the way philosophers do. Moreover, the words I see and hear in the vision are not like the words of human speech, but are like a blazing flame and a cloud that moves through clear air. I can by no means grasp the form of this light, any more than I can stare fully into the sun.
And sometimes, though not often, I see another light in that light, and this I have called "the Living Light"6 But I am even less able to explain how I see this light than I am the other one. Suffice it to say that when I do see it, all my sorrow and pain vanish from my memory and I become more like a young girl than an old woman.
But the constant infirmity I suffer sometimes makes me too weary to communicate the words and visions shown to me, but nevertheless when my spirit
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen sees and tastes them, I am so transformed, as I said before, that I consign all my sorrow and tribulation to oblivion. And my spirit drinks up those things I see and hear in that vision, as from an inexhaustible fountain, which remains ever full.
Moreover, that first light I mentioned, the one called "the shadow of the Living Light," is always present to my spirit And it has the appearance of the vault of heaven in a bright cloud on a starless night7 In this light I see those things
I frequently speak of, and from its brightness I hear the responses I give to those who make inquiry of me.
In a vision I also saw that my first book of visions was to be called Scivias,8 for it was brought forth by way of the Living Light and not through any human instruction. I also had a vision about crowns. I saw that all the orders of the church have distinct emblems according to their celestial brightness, but that virginity has no such distinguishing emblem save the black veil and the sign of the cross.
And I saw that a white veil to cover a virgin's head was to be the proper emblem of virginity. For this veil stands for the white garment which man once had, but subsequently lost, in Paradise. Furthermore, upon the virgin's head is to be set a circlet of three colors joined into one. For this circlet stands for the Holy Trinity. To this circlet four others are to be joined: the front bearing the Lamb of God; the right, a cherubim;9 the left, an angel; and the one behind, man.10 For all of these are pendants to the Trinity. This sign given by God will bless God, for He once clothed the first man in the whiteness of light. All of this is fully described in the Scivias. And I wrote this Scivias, as well as other volumes, according to a true vision, and I continue my writing up to the present day.
Body and soul, I am totally ignorant, and I count myself as nothing. But I look to the living God and relinquish all these matters to Him, so that He, Who has neither beginning nor end, may preserve me from evil. And so pray for me, you who seek these words of mine, and all of you who long to hear them in faith— pray for me that I may remain God's servant in true happiness.
O child of God, you who faithfully seek salvation from the Lord, observe the eagle flying toward the clouds on two wings. If one of those wings is wounded, the eagle falls to earth and cannot rise, no matter how hard it tries. So too man flies with the two wings of rationality, that is to say, with the knowledge of good and evil. The right wing is good knowledge, and the left, evil. Evil knowledge serves the good, and good knowledge is kept in check by the evil, and is even made more discerning by it. Indeed the good is made wise in all things through the evil.g Now, dear son of God, may the Lord raise the wings of your knowledge to straight paths so that although you come into contact with sin through the senses—since man's very nature makes it impossible not to sin—you nonetheless never willingly consent to sin. The heavenly choir sings praises to God for the person who acts in this way, because, although made from ashes, he loves
God so much that, for His sake, he does not spare himself, but, totally despising the self, preserves himself from sinful works. O noble knight, be so valiant in the battle that you may take your place in the heavenly choir, so that God will say to you: "You are one of the sons of Israel, because in your great desire for heaven you direct the eyes of your mind to the lofty mountain."
The Letters
As for all those you called my attention to in your letter, may they be guided by the Holy Spirit and inscribed in the Book of Life [cf. Apoc 20.12]. Moreover,
O faithful servant of God, speak specifically to Lord Siger, and warn him not to turn from the right hand to the left [cf Deut 5.32; Prov 4.27]. For if someone resists a vow that he has made, let him put on the breastplate of faith and the helmet of celestial desire [cf. Eph 6.14ff], and fight manfully. Then, he will successfully complete his journey. And let him consider the fact that when the first man obeyed the voice of his wife rather than the voice of God, he perished in his presumption [cf. Gen 3.17], because he consented to her. But if the tribulation appears to exceed their powers, let them remember the Scripture: "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it" [I Cor 10.13].
Thus strengthened by this blessed promise, let him and his wife be of one mind, and let them follow whatever course of action is best, whether suggested by the husband or the wife. And let them not fall prey to that first deception, with the man accusing the woman, and the woman, the man. But let them settle this whole matter according to the will of God. I pray that the fire of the Holy Spirit so enkindle their hearts that they never withdraw from Him.
Notes 1. This image of herself as a feather borne up by the breath of God is a frequent one in the letters and in the Scivias. See Letter 2, n. 3.
2. Hildegard's phrasing here is quite curious: quamdiu in corporali officio sum et in anima inuisibili, quoniam in bis duobus bomini defectus est.
3. Hildegard always insists that her visions are not the result of ecstasy, that she receives them in full consciousness, "with eyes wide open." See Vol. 1, p. 29, n. 4. Elsewhere, Hildegard stresses the uniqueness of this fully conscious visionary state. Compare the very different mystical experience of Elisabeth of Schonau, who apparently has her visions only in a state of ecstasy. See Letter 201.
4. This entire paragraph and most of the preceding one (beginning "God works His will for the glory of His name") are cited in the Vita Hildegardis I.8
5. Hildegard's words are scripture, sermones, uirtutes, quedam opera bominum. Scripture could, of course, be rendered as "the Scriptures," and sermones perhaps as "sermons."
6. Does Hildegard remember here the verse from Psalms 35.10, uEt in lumine tuo videbimus lumen" "And in thy light we shall see light"?
7. et Mud uideo uelut in lucida nube firmamentum absque stellis aspiciam. Whatever
Hildegard means by this strange image, it certainly captures the immensity of her vision.
8. This, the first of Hildegard's mystical works, takes its title apparently from a shortened form of the phrase Sti(or Scito) Vias (Domini), "Know the Ways (of the Lord)."
9. The plural cherubim used for the singular is a common medieval error.
10. In Scivias II.v.7 the "chorus of virgins" wear white veils, "because those who strive for the glory of virginity are to protect their minds from all noxious heat, and, adorned with the beautiful splendor of chastity, hold on to the warmth of innocence by their faith." In Letter 52r, Hildegard justifies the veils and crowns that her virgins wear on feast days in answer to charges of immodesty and feminine vanity from a certain
Tengswich.