VISIO TERTIA, cap. V
Swift Feet and the Height of Praise
God gives the soul the swiftness of a deer to run his commandments and leads it over high places into unwearied heavenly praise.
The Lord, God, my strength, will make my feet as swift as a deer's, and he will lead me, singing psalms in victory, over my high places.✦ This is clear to understanding in this way: God, who created me, and as Lord has authority over me, is my strength, since without him I am able to do nothing good, because through him I have the vital spirit by which I live and am moved, and by which I recognize all my paths.1 Therefore, when I have truly called upon this same God and Lord, he will set my steps into the swiftness of his commandments, just as a stag runs quickly when it longs for a spring, and in this way he will lead me over that height which has been shown and enjoined to me in his precepts, bringing down earthly desires, subduing them for me by the strength of victory, so that I may render unwearied praises to him when I have arrived at the blessedness of heavenly things.2
Fixed Like the Sun in God
The faithful soul fixed in God, like the sun in the firmament, cannot be torn away and so despises earthly things without stumbling.
For as the sun, placed in the firmament of heaven, rules over the earthly creature and nothing can overwhelm it, so too no faithful one who fixes heart and mind in God can be torn away from him. And because it is fixed in him, it truly despises all earthly things, and therefore no one is caused to stumble in him.
Unmoved by Death, Unstable World
The soul fixed in God is untouched by the fear of death or deceitful hatred, unlike the unstable who walk backward like a crab or wither like a whirlwind.
For by no clamor of the fear of death is it moved, nor in any toil is its lamentable time known, nor in caves of robbers — that is, in deceitful hatred — is it found, by which a person is often deceived, nor does it even walk in the whirlwind of instability, according to the unstable ways of people who do not look to their Creator but accomplish the works of their own hands according to the freedom of their own will.3 Therefore it is compared both to a crab walking backward and to a whirlwind that withers plants.
Winds, Air, and Disturbed Humors
The whirlwind image is explained physiologically: colliding winds and air disturb and alter the humors in a person.
What it means is that, depending on the varying quality of winds and air colliding with one another, the humors present in a person are disturbed and altered.4
Read the original Latin
« Dominus Deus fortitudo mea, et ponet pedes meos quasi cervorum, et super excelsa mea deducet me victor in psalmis canentem . » Quod sic intellectui patet: Deus qui me creavit, et ut Dominus, potestatem super me habet, fortitudo mea est, quoniam sine ipso nihil boni facere valeo, quia per ipsum vitalem spiritum quo vivo et moveor habeo, et quo omnia itinera mea cognosco. Unde et idem Deus et Dominus cum ipse veraciter invocavero, ponet gressus meos in velocitatem mandatorum suorum, quemadmodum cervus properat cum fontem desiderat, atque hoc modo super altitudinem illam, quae in praeceptis ejus mihi ostensa et injuncta est, deducet me terrenas concupiscentias in victoria fortitudinis mihi substernens, ita ut laudes indefessas ipsi referam, cum ad beatitudinem coelestium pervenero. Nam ut sol in firmamento coeli positus terrenae creaturae dominatur, nec aliquid eum obruere valet, sic etiam nec quilibet fidelis, cor et animum suum in Deo figens ab ipso evelli poterit. Et quoniam in ipso fixus est, omnia terrena veraciter despicit, quapropter et nullus in ipso scandalizatur. In nullo enim strepitu timore mortis movetur, nec in ullo labore tempus ipsius lamentabile esse cognoscitur, nec in speluncis latronum, id est in doloso odio invenitur, in quo homo multoties decipitur, nec etiam in turbine instabilitatis ambulat, secundum instabiles mores hominum qui Creatorem suum non inspiciunt, opera sua secundum libertatem voluntatis suae perficientes. Unde et cancro retro incedenti et turbini qui herbas arefacit assimilatur.
Quid significet quod secundum diversam qualitatem ventorum et aeris invicem in se concurrentium humores qui sunt in homine commoti permutentur.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Hab.3.19 — The LORD, my God, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's and causes me to walk upon my heights. For the director of music. With my stringed instruments.
Notes
- 1 ↩vitalem spiritum rendered 'vital spirit' — the phrase carries a sense of life-giving power; could also be rendered 'life-giving spirit.'
- 2 ↩victoria fortitudinis rendered 'strength of victory' — the phrase could also mean 'victorious strength.'
- 3 ↩The subject of this long sentence is the faithful soul fixed in God (from s4); 'it' refers to that soul or heart.
- 4 ↩Humores rendered as 'humors' (the four physiological fluids of medieval-Galenic medicine). Paraphrasing as 'moods' or 'emotions' would flatten the cosmological-physiological correspondence Hildegard is establishing between elemental forces and bodily composition.
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