VISIO QUARTA, cap. XXVI
The Body's Cycles and the Earth's Seasons
The natural rhythms of the body and the earth mirror one another, showing how moisture and warmth rise and fall in both flesh and soil.
When the brain is full, it discharges a watery discharge from itself, and when the bowels are full they produce evacuation — these things happen frequently in a person — just as moisture and warmth descend upon the earth and make it sprout, but after its fruit has fully ripened, the moisture and warmth are drawn back upward. Therefore, at the onset of cold when winter seems to be approaching, the air stretches upward and is partly congealed by the sun's heat, which lengthens like threads as it flies; and then, from the moisture above, the earth softens and spews out a foul scum. Similarly, when the work of the flesh is carried out, the body gives off sweat, and so pleasure arises in it, and then a person begins to act through the taste of delight.
The Soul's Repentance and the Body's Struggle
The soul, recognizing its sinful deeds, afflicts the body and withdraws from fleshly desire, leaving the person in ongoing distress between soul and flesh.
But when the soul in its awareness realizes that it has done deeds according to the will and desire of the flesh, it often breathes affliction for sins into the body, because it has done wrong, and then it withdraws itself from the desire of the flesh, so that sin may not take hold, and in this way the body too longs to abstain from sins. And the soul never fails to afflict the body and to bring harshness upon it for its sinful deeds, and so a person is always in distress — namely, so that the soul has a complaint against the flesh, and the flesh nurtures its pleasure. Therefore, just as in an evacuation, what is evil is recognized in the work of sin.
Mixed Fruit and the Pull of Habit
The soul produces both good and evil works, and when sinful habit takes hold, the soul urges repentance, leaving the person caught between wrongdoing and righteousness.
Indeed, the soul often works in the pleasure of the flesh, which it later rejects, just as the earth, touched by moisture and warmth, brings forth both useless and useful plants. And furthermore, when a long-standing habit of sin makes sins beset a person, then the soul often breathes into the body that it should seek repentance for them from God — just as moisture and warmth are drawn back upward more frequently — and so, caught between these, a person does both wrong and right.
Reason Hindered and Grace Restored
The soul reaches toward reason but is often cooled by the body's pull toward sin, yet through the Holy Spirit's dew it overcomes the flesh, groans in contrition, and counts its sins as mud.
Sometimes too, when the flesh looks upon its own pleasure, the soul reaches toward the warmth of reason, though it is often hindered by its earthly dwelling, because when the body, through its strength, draws back the forming of its own conception by sinning, then the rational soul grows cold by consenting to the flesh. But afterward, the same soul reaches upward toward reason, and laying bare its wicked deeds, it touches the person's heart too, making it groan and weep, and in this way it overcomes the flesh, so that the body, by the soul's power, does not carry the effect of sins to completion. Touched by the dew from above of the Holy Spirit, it lays aside its former hardness, and considering its sins, it counts them as if they were mud.
The Soul's Charge to Rule with Discretion
Just as the brain's vessel governs the body's heat and moisture under cosmic order, so the soul, placed under God's power and endowed with reason, must rule itself and the body with discernment.
Because the brain's vessel holds the place of the upper fire that kindles the sun, and the moisture of the watery air is to the sun's heat what a tempering agent is, and to its course it offers a limit so that what lies beneath does not shudder and break apart — and so the question is how, in light of all this, the soul, placed under God's power and judgment and endowed with reason for its own guidance, ought to rule both itself and its body in all things with discretion.12
Read the original Latin
Cerebrum etiam impletum ex se rheuma spumat, visceraque cum impleta fuerint egestionem faciunt, et ista frequenter in homine sunt, sicut et humor et calor super terram descendunt, eamque germinare faciunt, sed postquam fructus ipsius maturitatem pleniter acceperint, humor et calor sursum retrahuntur. Quapropter in initio frigoris cum hiems appropinquare videtur, aer sursum tendit, et de calore solis aliqua parte coagulatur, qui sicut fila se prolongando volare, et tunc etiam de superiori humiditate terra mollescit, et sordidam spumam evomit; similiter cum officia carnis implentur, caro sudorem emittit; et sic in ipsa delectatio exoritur, et deinde homo per gustum delectationis operari incipit. Sed cum anima in scientia sua senserit secundum voluntatem et concupiscentiam carnis se opera fecisse, carni multoties afflictionem peccatorum inspirat, quia malum operata est, et deinde a concupiscentia carnis se subtrahit, ne peccatum sciat, et ita etiam corpus optat a peccatis abstinere. Et anima nequaquam omittit quin corpus affligat, et asperitatem de factis peccatis ei inferat, et ideo in afflictione homo semper est, ita scilicet ut anima querelam contra carnem habeat, et caro delectationem nutriat; quapropter et in opere peccati velut in egestione malum cognoscitur. Anima quippe multoties in delectatione carnis operatur, quam postea repudiat, sicut etiam humore et calore terra tacta inutiles et utiles herbas germinat. Ac etiam cum peccatorum diuturna consuetudo peccata homini infesta facit, tunc anima corpori multoties inspirat, quatenus poenitentiam illorum a Deo quaerat, velut etiam humor et calor sursum saepius retrahuntur, et sic in medio istorum homo et malum et bonum operatur. Aliquando etiam cum caro hominis delectationem suam inspicit, anima ad calorem rationalitatis se extendit, quamvis per terrenam inhabitationem saepius impediatur, quoniam cum per fortitudinem corpus coagulationem conceptionis suae retractat peccando, tunc rationalis anima refrigescit carni consentiendo. Sed tamen deinde eadem anima ad rationalitatem se sursum extendit, cui et prava opera exponens cor hominis etiam tangit, et illud gemere et lacrymari facit, et hoc modo carnem superat, ita ut corpus pro viribus animae effectum peccatorum non perficiat, sed de superiore rore sancti Spiritus tactum pristinam duritiam deponat, et peccata sua considerans, illa quasi pro luto computet.
Quia vas cerebri superioris ignis solem accendentis vicem teneat, et humor aquosi aeris ejusdem solis et calori temperamentum, et cursui terminum ne subjecta concremet praebeat, et quomodo secundum haec anima sub potestate Dei et judicio posita, et rationalitate sibi indita discrete et se et corpus suum in omnibus regere debeat.
Notes
- 1 ↩The physiological-cosmological analogy (brain/sun/air/moisture) is rendered as plausibly as the Latin allows; several readings (especially accendentis, concremet, subjecta) remain uncertain, and the sentence is a single long periodic Latin construction broken into readable English clauses.
- 2 ↩anima rendered 'soul'; rationalitas as 'reason' (the rational faculty); potestas Dei as 'God's power'; judicium as 'judgment' — all preserved per lexeme policy.
Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works) companion
Don't stop at Day 30
All 317 chapters live in the free Chosen Portion app, paced for daily reading
Hildegard's practice of daily attention to God's work in creation becomes a paced daily devotional through all ten visions in the Chosen Portion app
- One vision passage a day, readable in under 10 minutes
- The complete Book of Divine Works plus Hildegard's other major works, free
- Progress tracking so a 317-chapter classic actually gets finished