Hildegard to the Abbot Adalard
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen 155r Hildegard to the Abbot Adalard Before 1169 Hildegard starts off by admonishing the abbot to be gentle to his subordinates, and then broadens out to discuss morality in general and man's inclination to sin through the devil's instigation.
I heard these words from the Living Light: You are like the potter who molds many vessels but who fails to fire them properly. Learn from this analogy that your works should not fail to possess the sheen of love. And you should dig around them with discernment, so that all your works may be reasonable. And they should be performed with abstinence and prayer, following the wholesome example of the saints who sprang forth like rivulets from the Living Fountain, and gave food to men which they could swallow with joy. For if they are given thorns instead of bread, they cannot eat them. Just so, if superiors use harsh words to their subordinates, they do not build them up, but lead them instead into error. For a superior must sift the words of his teaching with maternal sweetness so that his subordinates will gladly open their mouths and swallow them.
The millstone grinds grain and brings forth various kinds of meal. In the same way, the planters of the Church took legal precepts from the Old and the New Law. For the Old Law revealed by prophecy that Christ would be born
God, and Christ Himself sent His word forth to be preached in every land [cf.
Matt 28.19–20]. The millstone is the Old Law, which brought forth every grain of truth in Christ, and the pure wheat, sifted clean of all contamination, is virginity, which is the material of all spiritual life in the Church. And virginity brings forth the offspring of obedience, and these obedient children are the kiss of Christ's mouth [cf. Cant 1.1]. Therefore, let a superior always receive obedient subordinates with the embrace of love and not with the stumbling block of anger, because they are the kiss of God, and are to be fed on bread of fine wheat. But coarse meal, that is to say, severe chastisement, is to be fed to disobedient children. Bran is to be served to those who completely abandon obedience, for that is the food of brute beasts that lack understanding.
As for you, be provident and remember the sanctity of those who "ate manna"
[John 6.31], drink from the streams of living water [cf. John 4.13–14], and be peaceable and devout in God, so that you may flourish in His garden with the viridity of other wholesome herbs. But flee the foolishness of those who forsake the sun they see to look for another sun that they neither see, nor can find. And flee also those new perfumers1 who want to make the law their own personal province, for they will not prevail.
Now, therefore, make your beginning in Him Who Is, so that you may have your ending in Him Who Was and Who Is To Come [cf. Apoc 1.4]. You have been established by God in two ways: that He might call you into good knowl-
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edge and protect you from bad knowledge. When you raise yourself on the two wings of the knowledge of good and evil, resplendent works but also great suffering and misery lie on these ways. Therefore, pay heed to the three strengths with which God endowed mankind: understanding, the senses, and motion of the body—all of which man is aware of through their potential. In these three powers, and in the aforementioned two ways, God maintains you. For through the Spirit of the Lord, you see with understanding, and through the body you become aware of evil things by means of the senses. You know both good and evil, for you are both spiritual and corporeal. The grace of God calls you in admonition, and the Holy Spirit enkindles you with His fire to love God and rise up to Him by your good works.
But through his deception, the devil sometimes diverts you from God's admonitions, and prevents you from loving God. Through his evil instigation, he reminds you that you are a mere human being, and that it is, therefore, impossible for you to do anything unseen. Whenever a person denies God, the deception of the devil blows a black and evil instability upon him. Although the devil denies that God exists, he knows that he is mistaken, for, since he knows that he himself exists, he is, therefore, aware that God exists. He has some share in the sin of conceiving human beings, and through this share he lacerates many in the flesh. For whoever says in his heart that God does not exist [cf. Ps 52.1] is also saying that heaven and earth, and all things living in God and with God, do not exist, and is, moreover, denying his own existence.
How very foolish it is for a person who sees himself and knows himself to say in his doubt, "I do not exist." For even a particle of dust has no existence apart from God. But when a person overcomes his body, even though he has some doubts, he cuts down the devil and his spiritual evils. Therefore, he will receive a reward and a crown in the presence of God and His angels and all the heavenly host.
The breath of the devil infuses man with many forbidden notions, which good knowledge blushes to name. It is his plan for mankind to be subject to the kind of vainglory that he himself displayed when he brought about that great ruin by which he caused the wheel of man's nativity to spin a fiery course [cf.
James 3.6]. He also seeks to incite mankind to many forbidden actions, mankind whom he knows to have been created in the image of God [cf. Gen 1.26ff]. Therefore, he shows him many things that are impossible for any created being. But he has no power over them, and it is for this reason that he implants his evil ideas in mankind, so that man might, by his own choice, bring his malice to fruition. In this way, he brings God's law into derision, so that every man, as a god unto himself, might establish a law for himself out of his own will. And the devil delights in this, because he doesn't want anyone—neither himself nor anyone else—to be subordinate to God.
As for you, O son of God, the God who created you wishes to receive you through the victory of His army, so that you might come into the eye of His knowledge, for He will never abandon you [cf. Deut 31.6ff]. Through faith, therefore, look to the sun, so that you may become a faithful servant. And look to the moon in the night, whenever vices oppress you, so that through the fear of the