‘SELECTED WRITINGS’ – Saint Hildegard of Bingen Translated by Mark Atherton – ‘Letter to Bernard of Clairvaux’; pages 49-50
[HILDEGARD OF BINGEN was born into a noble family in Bermersheim in 1098. At the age of eight her family gave her into the care of a religious noblewoman, Jutta of Spanheim, who took Hildegard with her to become a recluse at the Disibodenberg monastery. Some time between 1112 and 1115, when the monastery became a convent, Hildegard took religious vows.After Jutta’s death in 1136, Hildegard was elected abbess at Disibodenberg. At this time she started to write about the visions she had been experiencing. Her first work, Scivias, appeared with Papal approval in 1151, just after she had established her own religious community at Rupertsberg, near Bingen. Her collection of religious songs, the Symphonia, appeared in 1158. She then produced a number of other works, including The Book of Life’s Merits (c. 1163), The Book of Divine Works (c. 113), lives of local saints, and various musical, scientific and medical works. She also invented a private language, which formed the basis of two short works, The Unknown Language and The Unknown Alphabet (both completed by 1158). Hildegard was by this time regarded as a mystic and prophetess, and she came to be known as the ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’. In about 1158 she undertook the first of her preaching tours throughout Germany, a very unusual venture for a medieval abbess. This was followed by three further tours in 1160, 1161-3 and 1170-71. She founded a second monastery at Eibingen in 1165.
Hildegard died in 1179. She was celebrated as a saint in the Rhineland and in the fifteenth century her feast day was established as 17 September.]
“KNOW THE WAYS
Hildegard to Bernard of Clairvaux
Bernard of Clairvaux was an obvious person for Hildegard to appeal to for support as she pondered a radical change of course in her life and career. A widely known author and by then a venerable figure, Bernard was the abbot of the principal Cistercian monastery and head of the Cistercian order. He was also well placed to intervene on her behalf with a former monk of Clairvaux, Bernardo Pignatelli of Pisa, who had been elected Pope Eugenius III in the previous year. Bernard was an influential figure in the politics of Church and state, particularly in Finance and Germany, and at the time of her letter to him he had been preoccupied with in which he sought to gather support for the Second Crusade.
Hildegard to Bernard of Clairvaux, 1146
Venerable Father Bernard, you are held wonderfully in high honour by the power of God. You are a terror to the unlawful foolishness of the world; you burn in the love of God’s son; you are eager to win men for the banner of the Holy Cross to fight wars in the Christian army against the fury of the pagans. Father, I ask you, by the living God, to attend to my questions.
I am very concerned by this vision which has appeared to me in the spirit of mystery, for I have never seen it with the external eyes of the flesh. I who am miserable and more than miserable in my womanly existence have seen great wonders since I was a child. And my tongue could not express them, if God’s Spirit did not teach me to believe.
Most gentle Father, you are secure; in your goodness please answer me, your unworthy servant, for since I was a child I have never felt secure, not for a single hour! Could you search your soul, in your piety and wisdom, and discover how you are instructed by the Holy Spirit, and pour consolation upon me, your servant, from your heart?
For in the text I know the inner meaning of the exposition of the Psalter and the Gospel and other books shown to me in this vision, which touches my heart and soul like a consuming fire, teaching me these profundities of exposition. But it does not teach me writings in the German tongue - these I do not know – and I only know how to read for the simple meaning, not for any textual analysis. Give me an answer as to what you think, for I am a person ignorant of all teaching in external matters; I am taught inwardly, in my soul.
Therefore I speak as one in doubt.
Hearing of your wisdom and piety I am comforted. Because there is so much divisiveness in people I have not dared to speak of these things to any other person except for one monk - whom I tested with regard to the integrity of his monastic life. I revealed all my secrets to him and he consoled me and convinced me that these are great secrets and things to be feared.
Father Bernard, I want you to reassure me, and then I will be certain! In a vision two years ago I saw you as a man able to stare at the sun without flinching, a courageous man. And I wept because I blush so much - because I am so timid! Good Father, through your kindness I have found a place in your soul, so that now, if you will, you can reveal to me through your word4 whether you want me to say these things openly or whether I should keep quiet. For I have great trouble with this visionary gift about how much I should say of what I have seen and heard. And sometimes, because I keep quiet, I am laid low by the vision and confined to my sickbed, unable to raise myself up. So I am sad, I lament before you: I am unstable with the movement of the wooden beam of the wine-press in my nature, the beam which grew at the prompting of the devil from the root in Adam (for which he was cast out as a wanderer in this exile world). But now I raise myself up, I run to you, I speak to you. You are not unstable, you ease the pressure of the wooden beam, you gain the victory in your soul! And it is not only yourself alone: you raise up the whole world to salvation! You are the eagle staring at the sun!
And so I entreat you: by the brightness of the Father, by his wonderful Word, by the sweet humour of compunction, by the Spirit of Truth, by the sacred sound through which all creation resounds, by the Word from which all the world was created, by the height of the Father who through the sweet power of green vigour sent the Word to the Virgin’s womb where it took on flesh like the honey in the honeycomb! May the sacred sound, the power of the Father, fall upon your heart and raise up your soul so that you are not passive and indifferent to the words of this correspondent, as long as you seek all things from God, from man or woman, or from the mystery, until you pass through the doorway in your soul and know these things in God.
Farewell. Be well in your soul, and strong in your certainty in God. Amen.”
Image: Unbekannt_-_Hildegard_receives_a_vision_in_the_presence_of_her_secretary_Volmar
Music: ‘O ignis spiritus Paracliti’ · Sequentia · Barbara Thornton · Hildegard von Bingen
‘O ignis spiritus Paracliti’ = ‘O fire, the spirit of the Paraclete’
>>> youtube.com/watch?v=_iHMdmrZ_ec