Hildegard of Bingen by Carmen Acevedo Butcher

Author:Carmen Acevedo Butcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Published: 2007-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

4

Selections from Her Letters

She denounced the vices of society, of kings, nobles, bishops, and

priests in unmeasured terms, but the Emperor, bishops, abbots, and

laymen came to ask for her advice.

—The Rt. Reverend Frederick G. Holweck,

domestic prelate to Pope Pius XI,

A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints19

INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTERS

ALTHOUGH MEDIEVAL LETTERS were not usually the personal communications we think of when we speak today of “letters” or even “e-mails,” Hildegard’s bright energy runs through hers, even when she is talking in her most prophetic voice. Eschewing salutations, Hildegard prefers to open her letters with the voice of God. She often begins, “The Living Spring says—” and she likes to close with this reminder (using the same divine voice): “This writing doesn’t come from any human person, but from the living Light. May all who hear it see and believe in Me.”

Also, although Hildegard keenly felt that it was her responsibility to turn the mystic language of her visions into something intelligible to others, her writing always trails clouds of glory, as Wordsworth might have said, because in it many voices blend. We see this quality in her letters, too. In addition to God (“the living Spring” and “the living Light”), we hear Humility, Chastity, and other virtues speak, and, interwoven with them, we hear Hildegard’s own verve. The public nature of medieval letters sheds only a little light on the elusive quality of this Benedictine nun’s personality, but her dynamic energy is never in question.

A splendid example of the nature imagery central to Hildegard’s work is found in a letter she wrote responding to a polite-but-critical letter she had received from Mistress Tengswich, the superior of a foundation of canonesses in Andernach and the sister of Richard of Springiersbach. Tengswich and her brother were reformers; they advocated apostolic poverty, and Tengswich vehemently disagreed with some of Hildegard’s approaches to monastic life. Her principal concern was that Hildegard permitted the virgins in her community to let their hair down for liturgical celebrations. Tengswich may have been referring to a costumed performance of The Play of the Virtues.

Hildegard’s nuns did adorn themselves with white floor-length silk veils, golden rings, and gold-filigree crowns (with the figure of a Lamb on the front, and crosses on the back and sides). In these regal costumes, the celebrants would have looked stunning, and Hildegard approved. She must have enjoyed the splendid procession made by these poised noble women singing psalms.

Hildegard’s response to Tengswich shows that in the hierarchy of Hildegard’s mind, virgins were the apex of creation. Marriage was not “bad,” but Hildegard taught that it was a consequence of the Fall and therefore could never be a calling as exalted as virginity. Her virgins were special to God because they were pure and because they were intimate with God’s Son (who was and is and will be Viriditas); therefore her nuns were co-participants in God’s rejuvenating Energy. The poet Dylan Thomas plants the word green throughout his work to suggest something equally mysterious: “The force that through

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