VISIO QUARTA, cap. XLII
The Body's Seasons of Warmth and Cold
Just as teeth grow in infancy when blood is warm and fall out in old age when heat fades, so the body's vitality rises and declines across a lifetime.
For an infant, since it's tender and doesn't yet have the strength of blood, lacks teeth, because it's also cold; but once the blood in it is strengthened and suffused with heat, its teeth arise and grow strong. But when someone reaches old age, the blood in them diminishes and the heat weakens, and their teeth, on account of the cold, are again turned to loss and disturbance.
The Soul's Fire Within the Body
The soul, joined to the body at God's command, warms it with its own fire until it departs by that same command.
So too, when the soul is first joined to its body at the command of almighty God — the body that was created from the four elements — it warms it with its own fire until, by the command of almighty God, it departs from there.
Innocence in the Nursing Child
In early infancy the soul rejoices in the person because sin does not yet exist, recalling Adam's pure and innocent life before the fall.
The soul itself, in a person's infancy — on account of that innocence — while it's still being nourished by sucking on tender foods, rejoices greatly in that person, because sin doesn't yet exist, just as Adam too, before his transgression, had tasted purely and simply by living innocently.
The Soul Overcome by Sin
As the person matures in body, innocence fades, sin arises, and the soul is weighed down, groaning in loss and torment as it is defiled by the taste of sin.
But when a person, with the passage of time, has grown strong in bones, flesh, and blood, innocence ceases, because the taste of sin then arises in the person, and the soul, weighed down as it works against its own nature within the person, is overcome as it lives through the body in sin. And just as after the sun sets its brightness is withdrawn from people, so too the soul itself, after committing sin, is tormented with groaning and weeping over the loss of the joy it had before. For the taste of sin defiles the body and the blood and all the entrails of a person through the working of sin; but after sins have been committed, the person, wearied by their own sins, is often driven into pain of heart through the sighs of a compelled soul.
The Sign of Teeth in the Soul
Hildegard turns to ask how teeth are formed in children amid pain, and what this suffering signifies for the soul.
How or where teeth are formed in children, and why they're gripped by severe pain in the meantime — and what these things signify in us.
Read the original Latin
Nam infans cum tener est, et fortitudinem sanguinis nondum habet, dentibus caret, quia etiam frigidus est, sed postquam sanguis in eo roboratur, et calore perfunditur, dentes ejus oriuntur et confortantur. Cum autem ad senectutem pervenerit, sanguis in eo minuitur, et calor in ipso attenuatur, dentesque ejus iterum pro frigiditate in detrimentum et in commotionem convertuntur. Sic et cum anima primum ex praecepto omnipotentis Dei incorporatur, corpus suum, quod ex quatuor elementis creatum est, igne suo tandiu calefacit quousque per praeceptum omnipotentis Dei inde transeat. Ipsa etiam anima in infantia hominis, propter innocentiam ipsius cum adhuc sugendo teneris cibis pascitur, in ipso multum gaudet, quia nondum peccata, sicut nec Adam ante praevaricationem pure et simpliciter vivendo gustavit. Sed homo cum, per incrementum temporis confortatis ossibus, carnis et sanguinis sui robur acceperit innocentia cessat, quoniam gustus peccatorum in homine tunc surgit, anima contra naturam suam operando in ipso depressa, et per corpus in peccatis vivendo superata. Et quemadmodum post solis occasum splendor ipsius hominibus subtrahitur, sic ipsa post perpetrationem peccati, de amissione gaudii quod prius habuerat, gemens et plorans cruciatur. Gustus namque peccatorum corpus et sanguinem et omnia viscera hominis per opus peccatorum contaminat; post peracta vero peccata, homo taedio peccatorum suorum in dolorem cordis per suspiria animae multoties coactus ducitur.
Quomodo vel unde dentes in pueris formentur, et quare gravi interim dolore constringantur, et horum in nobis significatio.
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