R214: Hildegard von Rupertsberg an Priester B. von Trier
The Spirit's Healing Word
Hildegard, speaking as the Spirit of truth, teaches that wounded souls must be tended with merciful, repeated anointings by the true Physician.
Hildegard's reply. The Spirit of truth says this in its mystical gift. The person who carries wounds within them and who pours oil on those wounds — but who still can't bear wine poured into their wounds.1 Let the physician, in mercy, anoint them often. And let him not allow a festering bruise to remain in that person. because leprosy is cleansed only through the highest Physician.
Words That Do Not Reach the Heart
Hildegard warns that many who come to confession overflow with words but lack true interior understanding, masking old vices behind bitter complaints.
The place where a person shows himself to the priest. But many come to me with a flood of words from their minds. They want to investigate, with their eyes wide open, what the healing of their wounds might be, and they want to touch me with their tongue, sweating as they speak in all kinds of words. Their deeper mind doesn't understand me. So much so that they bring up a habit that swallows them up in the transgression of the ancient vices of their drunkenness. But they say: We drink the bitterness of rebuke! and we have wiped away our iniquity.
Binding the Obstinate, Freeing the Contrite
Those who cling to sin should be restrained, but the truly sorrowful should be anointed, for the great Physician both rouses the watchful and rebukes the spiritually asleep.
And so they refuse to abandon their evil ways. Truly, these people ought to be bound. So that they can't move about through worldly paths! Because they refuse to forsake their own iniquities. But a person who always forsakes his iniquities with grief— —one who doesn't want to be plunged again and again into foul sins—is not to be bound in the manner described above, but to be anointed in his own sorrows.2 Wherever he may be. For the great Physician rouses those who are watchful and rebukes those who are asleep.✦
A Charge to the Priest-Physician
Hildegard concludes by warning that persistent evil brings death and by exhorting the priest-physician to discern and supply what is truly needed in each case.
And it kills those who persist in their evil deeds. Therefore, O physician, in these two matters provide what necessary thing is needed.
Read the original Latin
Responsum hildegardis. Spiritus ueritatis in mistico dono suo dicit. Hominem in se uulnera habentem. et ea cum oleo aspergentem. sed tamen infusum uinum in uulneribus suis sustinere non ualentem. medicus cum misericordia frequenter unguat. nec fetentem liuorem in illo esse sinat. quia lepra per summum medicum abstergitur.
ubi se homo sacerdoti ostendit. Sed multi ueniunt ad me cum uerbositate mentis suę. uolentes sciscitare cum uidentibus oculis quę sit salus uulnerum suorum et uolunt me tangere per linguam suam in diueris uerbis sudantem. Interior mens eorum non intelligit me. ita quod educant consuetudinem eos absorbentem in preuaricatione antiquorum uiciorum ebrietatis suę. Sed dicunt. Amaritudinem correptionis bibimus! et iniquitatem nostram extersimus.
Et ita nolunt relinquere malas uias suas. Certe hi debent ligari. ne possint se mouere per seculares uias! quoniam iniquitates suas deserere nolunt. Homo autem qui semper cum dolore iniquitates suas deserit. ita quod non uult in sordida peccata sepius dimergi non est predicto modo ligandus sed in doloribus suis unguendus. in quocumque loco sit. Magnus enim medicus uigilantes suscitat et dormientes corripit.
et in malis suis perseuerantes occidit. Ideo o tu medice. in his duabus partibus prouide quę sit necessaria necessitas.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Mark.2.17 — When Jesus heard this, he said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin participial chain (infusum...sustinere non ualentem) is compressed into a natural English relative clause; adversative force of sed tamen is preserved as 'but...still'.
- 2 ↩unguendus (to be anointed): Hildegard contrasts binding/restraint with anointing/healing; the gerundive carries a prescriptive force — this person 'is to be anointed' rather than merely comforted.
Epistolae: Letters to Frederick Barbarossa and Henry II of England companion
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