The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen

Popes, an emperor and Bernard of Clairvaux on one side of the page, and on the other an abbess telling them what she has seen.

by Hildegard von Bingen671 passages held

Latin, the original language

Original title: Epistolae
First published: 1146(aged 48)
Original language: Latin

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Overview

In the nearly four hundred surviving letters to and from Hildegard of Bingen, she does the same thing again and again: writes to people far above her in the Church and the empire, and tells them, as a message from the living light, what they are doing wrong. Around 1146, while Bernard of Clairvaux, the Cistercian abbot, was preaching the Second Crusade, she wrote to ask him whether she should make known what she saw in her visions, calling herself wretched, and more wretched still for bearing a woman's name. Bernard answered briefly, pleading the press of business, told her to hold the grace she had been given with humility, and asked for her prayers; it is the only exchange between them. Her own circle collected the letters in her lifetime, and Guibert of Gembloux, her last secretary, edited them heavily. The great Wiesbaden manuscript of her works orders them not by date but by the rank of the correspondent, with the popes at the head. Pope Eugenius III's letter encourages her to write what the Spirit shows her and permits her to found her own house. Archbishop Henry of Mainz orders her to release one of her nuns, elected abbess elsewhere; she replies that church offices are being handed out for money and reminds him that Nebuchadnezzar fell. Within two years Henry had been deposed. Frederick Barbarossa writes that what she foretold to him at his palace of Ingelheim has come to pass. The last great episode came in 1178, when the prelates of Mainz ordered her to dig up a young man buried at Rupertsberg, her convent near Bingen, because he had once been excommunicated. He had been absolved before he died, and she refused. Her nuns were forbidden to sing the office or receive communion, and she wrote to the prelates that the Church's singing recalls the voice Adam lost at the fall, and that whoever silences it without just cause will go without the company of the angels. Archbishop Christian of Mainz lifted the ban in 1179. She died that September.

Key concepts

What is the 'living light' Hildegard's letters speak from?

It is the source she names for what she tells her correspondents. She writes not as a counsellor offering an opinion but as one repeating what the living light has shown her, and she often frames a letter as its words rather than her own. That framing is her whole claim to address popes and archbishops: the authority belongs to the light, and she is only its messenger.

What does discretion mean in her spiritual counsel?

Discretion is the sense of measure that finds the right amount in everything, and she treats it as the virtue that governs the others. Again and again she warns abbots and abbesses against a rigour that crushes and a laxity that neglects, and urges fasting, correction and prayer in proportion to what a person can bear. Without discretion, even a virtue tips over into its own excess.

Why does she link the Church's singing with the voice Adam lost?

Because she holds that before the fall Adam's voice joined the angels in praise, and that sung praise is what remains of that lost voice. When the prelates of Mainz silenced her nuns, she answered that the Church's music recalls paradise, so that to silence it without just cause is to cut people off from the company of the angels, and those who do so will lose it themselves.

What is viriditas, the 'greenness' her letters keep invoking?

Viriditas is the living freshness God's power gives to creatures and souls, the opposite of the dryness that comes from neglect. In the letters it names spiritual vigour: a community, a prelate or a soul is green when it bears the fruit of good works, and dry when it has let prayer and justice wither. She uses the image to praise and, more often, to warn.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A prophetic voice addressed to the powerful

What entitles a nun to rebuke popes and an emperor, and what does she answer to when the Church rebukes her in turn? The letters test obedience against conscience at the highest rank.

Again and again she writes to people far above her, popes, archbishops, an emperor, and tells them, as a message from the living light, what they are doing wrong. The authority, she insists, is not hers: to Bernard of Clairvaux she called herself wretched, more wretched for bearing a woman's name, and that lowliness is what lets the light speak. When Archbishop Henry of Mainz demands one of her nuns, she answers that church offices are being sold. When the prelates of Mainz silence her convent's singing, she replies that whoever silences it without just cause loses the angels' company.

prophecy
religious authority
religious leadership
leadership
justice
obedience
humility
repentance
sin

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Counsel for the weary and the burdened

What does a person owe those in their charge when the burden grows too heavy to carry? Her replies to weary abbots and anxious nuns turn prayer, measure and perseverance into a rule for leading.

Most of the letters are not rebukes but replies: abbots, abbesses and bishops asking for a word and receiving counsel about prayer, weariness and the weight of office. Her advice refuses both extremes, warning superiors against a harshness that breaks their charges and a laxity that leaves them untended, and telling the discouraged to persevere rather than flee the post they were given. Suffering is treated as something that can be carried and made fruitful, never as a sign of abandonment, and intercession binds writer and recipient into one community of prayer.

spiritual counsel
pastoral care
consolation
prayer
intercession
suffering
perseverance
mercy
divine mercy
charity
community
faith
virtue

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Within this work

passages held: 671
distinct concepts: 640
by passages held, corpus-wide: #103

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “repentance” and “sin”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 86 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
repentance	sin	22
prayer	salvation	12
humility	prayer	10
repentance	salvation	10
charity	obedience	8
humility	virtue	8
charity	humility	7
charity	virtue	7
humility	repentance	7
repentance	virtue	7
salvation	sin	7
obedience	virtue	6
prayer	repentance	5
prayer	sin	5
charity	repentance	3
humility	obedience	3
prayer	virtue	3
charity	prayer	2
charity	salvation	2
humility	salvation	2
humility	sin	2
obedience	prayer	2
obedience	sin	2
charity	sin	1
obedience	repentance	1
obedience	salvation	1
salvation	virtue	1
sin	virtue	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1146 The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen (Epistolae) you are here LA
1151 Scivias
The first of her three great visionary books, begun at Disibodenberg and finished after she had moved her nuns to Rupertsberg; The Book of Divine Works, completed some twenty years later, is the last.
LA
1170 An Explanation of the Athanasian Creed (Explanatio Symboli S. Athanasii)
One of the shorter writings of her last years, in which the visions give way to commentary on a text the Western Church already recited.
LA
1173 The Book of Divine Works (Liber divinorum operum)
Where Scivias and the Liber vitae meritorum follow salvation, vice and virtue, this third of her visionary books takes in the whole cosmos.
LA
1176 Solutions to Thirty-Eight Questions (Solutiones quaestionum XXXVIII)
An outgrowth of her letters, with Guibert of Gembloux's covering letter still at its head: the one work on this shelf whose subject was chosen by someone else, question by question.
LA

— or open another of their works