Hildegard to the Monk Guibert
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen turber, the devil, uses to terrify tender novices, and he will be able to direct his course through the crises of the present life as faith billows his sails, and the Holy
Spirit grants him a welcome, favoring breeze until he is brought safely through every danger and is anchored in the peaceful harbor, that is, in the security of eternal beatitude, which he longs for in answer to his vows.
Through your sweet mouth, let me dutifully greet the sacred convent of those sisters who serve God under your direction. Please have them pray for me and for all those whom I have entrusted to Christ's mercy. Beseech the Holy Spirit especially to remove carnal desires from us and to cause our hearts, which have so far been dark and slothful, to burn with the heat of His love and to radiate with His light.
Would you please send the present letter back to me, and also whatever letters I or the brothers of Villers have sent to you at various times up to the present For it is my intention to gather all our letters, yours to me and mine to you, into one volume and to preserve them not only for my consolation but also as a means of exciting divine wonder for His gifts to me in those who will by chance deign to read them.1 Farewell in Christ to you and yours.
Notes 1. The delay was long indeed. She left before November 1 (All Saints Day) and did not return until January 13 (the Octave of Epiphany). The brothers had reasonably expected her to return at least by November 18 (the Octave of St. Martin).
2. See Virtutes lobannis, iii.66–82. In Acta lohannis.
109r Hildegard to the Monk Guibert and the Monks of Villers
Hildegard cites Canticles 2.4–5, and expounds upon it at length as the love of God, that love which sustains the angels who look directly on the face of God and are never satiated, and that love which sustained the martyrs and brought them through to paradise. Then, she applies the verse specifically to the monks, who are "martyred" through their vows repudiating the world. Finally, she addresses the matter of the questions sent to her, noting that she has answered fourteen of them, but has advanced no further because of illness and the press of her administrative duties.
In a spiritual vision of my soul, I saw and heard these words: O sons of Love, you who have drunk from that sparkling, inexhaustible fountain [cf. John 4.14], and
The Letters
who have been enkindled by that inextinguishable lamp so that without tedium and in pure faith you seek the things that are His and desire to find them, these words are said to you: The king "brought me into the cellar of wine, he ordained love in me. Stay me up with flowers, comfort me with apples: because I languish with love" [Cant 2.4–5].
This verse is to be understood thus: God established the Old Law like the mold which an artisan makes out of mud in order to produce his metal work. For the Old Law was the shadow of that noble flower which God, according to His ancient plan, had ordained would come forth from the Virgin Mary [cf. Is 11.1].
This flower is the Son of God and the resplendent sun, which illuminates the whole world, and He provided us with the best wine when, through the clothing of His humanity, we knew His beautiful form through knowledge, and we learned the true doctrine of pure faith in wisdom. And so "He ordained love" in us. Love is an inextinguishable fire, the love which enkindles the sparks of true faith. And those sparks burn in the hearts of the faithful, who are enkindled to the faith through the love of God, faith which they could never have unless they loved
Him in their hearts first. And so love has been ordained in us.
Through these sparks those martyrs who poured out their blood for Christ and the true faith flew to celestial desire burning with the inextinguishable fire of love, and, sustained by the flowers of martyrdom, attained eternal glory. And that same love filled the minds of a host of the faithful with the sparks of the true faith, for they hunger and thirst for the justice of God [cf Matt 5.6] and can never be satiated with it, just as the angels, who gaze forever on the face of God, can never be satiated, for He is that love [cf. I John 4.8] which has neither beginning nor end. These blessed ones are comforted, as with apples, by the confident hope of the innumerable benefits of eternal beatitude, and they always sigh for God, for they have contempt for fleshly appetite in themselves, conquering it through martyrdom, that appetite which entered mankind through the taste of the fruit at Adam's fall [cf. Gen 3.6]. For the living fountain has so shed His grace upon them that, having died to the delight of the flesh, they languish in the love of Him with an everlasting hunger and thirst for the justice of God, until at last they are blessedly satisfied in eternal life with the magnitude of His glory.
0 sons of God, you are sealed in this love because you have repudiated your worldly flesh for the love of the true sun, that is, the Son of God, Who flowered forth as true man from the flesh of Mary, and Who ordained His love in you.
Now, may the purest light of the true sun illumine you, and may it teach you to persevere in the holy way of life to a happy end so that you may live in eternity in true bliss.
I am a poor little untaught form of a woman, who is subject to the governance of your profound wisdom. In response to the faithful petition of your love,
I looked to the True Light, and as far as I could through the grace of God, I labored on the answers to your questions. But I have not yet completed the writing
I began because of the press of my affairs and because of the great infirmity that I have suffered for a long time by the will of God. I have answered only fourteen of those questions so far, but, to the best of my ability through the grace of God,
I will gladly work on the others.