Chapter 36OrdV.1.36
Virtutes
Praise to the Living Life
The Virtues address God as living life and sweet consoler, who conquers death and opens the closed heavens.
O living life, and O sweet consoler, you conquer the death-bringing things of death, and with the eye seeing, you open the closure of heaven.12
Read the original Latin
O vivens vita, et o suavis consolatrix, tu mortifera mortis vincis et vidente oculo clausuram celi aperis.
Notes
- 1 ↩mortifera: agreement ambiguous — likely 'death-bringing things' (accusative plural neuter) as object of vincis, but could be nominative predicate with tu ('you, death-bringing one, conquer death'). Chose accusative reading as more natural in context.
- 2 ↩vidente oculo: ablative absolute ('with the eye seeing') or instrumental ablative ('by the seeing eye'). The participial phrase modifies the subject's mode of opening heaven.
Ordo Virtutum (Order of the Virtues) companion
Let a different Virtue meet you each morning
Chosen Portion walks you through the whole Ordo Virtutum — and Hildegard's Scivias — as free daily devotionals.
The Ordo was performed scene by scene by Hildegard's nuns, and Chosen Portion restores that rhythm — one scene of the Virtues' drama as each day's devotional.
- The complete 84-scene drama, one short scene per day, in modern readable English
- Each portion pairs the scene with its Scripture echoes — 26 references resolved across the play
- Finish Hildegard, then continue with 70+ other works from Europe's royal devotional archive