Saint Hildegard

As she was thus solely applied to God, to whom alone she sought to be pleasing, she heard a divine voice that commanded her to write down in the future all the things that would be made known to her. The delay she took in obeying this command from heaven, for fear of not being approved by men, caused her illness to redouble. The anxiety she felt regarding this compelled her to have recourse to a religious: she revealed to him the subject of her infirmity and the command she had received; and, by the counsel he gave her, after having proposed the matter to his abbot and other spiritual persons, she was entirely determined to follow this heavenly inspiration. As soon as she set herself to the task, her strength returned all at once; and although she had never learned to write, she made a book of the visions and revelations she had had until then, and placed it in the hands of the abbot for him to examine. He did not trust his own judgment in a matter so delicate and important; but he went to Mainz to confer about it with the archbishop and the learned men of his Church. From there he went to Trier, where he learned that Pope Eugene III had gone after the Council of Reims, o ver which he ha pape Eugène III Pope who transferred the relics of Saint Vannes in 1147. d presided. This Pope, so as not to decide anything without mature deliberation, sent the Bishop of Verdun to Hildegard along with other highly enlightened persons, in order to examine by what spirit she had discovered so many wonders. They reported that the humility and simplicity of the Saint were sure signs that she was led only by the Spirit of God; thus he himself read these divine writings in the presence of Adalberon, Archbishop of Trier, the cardinals, and all the clergy, and there was no one in that learned company who was not enraptured by their solidity, and who did not bless the goodness of God for having communicated Himself in such a rare and admirable manner to a simple girl. Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who wa s in the assembly, represented t Saint Bernard, abbé de Clairvaux Contemporary and admirer of Guigo. o the Pope that he should not leave in obscurity a person to whom God communicated so many beautiful lights, but that he should use his authority to confirm what she had already dictated, and to encourage her to continue writing similar things. Eugene, acquiescing to this sentiment, wrote her a letter to exhort her to carefully collect all the things that the Holy Spirit would reveal to her; and, in order to further authorize her, he wrote another to the abbot and the religious, to let them know the good opinion he had of the holy recluse. Abbot Trithemius says that Saint Bernard went to see her himself to have the happiness of speaking with her; that he was fully satisfied with her, confessed loudly that she was inspired by God, exhorted her to perseverance, strengthened her in the ways of her calling, and even formed a holy friendship with her, which he maintained through several letters; that he wrote them to her, whether to console her in the continual illnesses with which she was attacked, or to give her the instructions he judged necessary for her in the extraordinary conduct that divine Providence kept over her. But Father Stilting, in volume V of September of the Acta Sanctorum, has demonstrated that this fact was entirely false.

This inquiry ordered by the Pope, and followed by such an authentic approval, spread the reputation of Hildegard's holiness everywhere; the odor of her virtues soon attracted a great number of people to her, who came to consult her on the difficulties of their conscience, on the means of achieving their salvation, and of advancing in perfection. Several young women asked her for the religious habit, and so many presented themselves that her hermitage, of which Saint Jutta had left her superior, could not contain them all, and she was obliged to have a more spacious one built. The Mount of Saint Robert or Rupert (near Bingen), so cal Bingen Town near which Hildegard founded her monastery. led because it was in the domain of this holy duke, and because he had holily ended his days there with the blessed Bertha, his mother, and Saint Guibert, confessor, was the place of this new retreat, which was shown to her divinely in a vision. Count Meginhard, whose daughter, named Hiltrude, had become a nun under the guidance of our Saint, made the donation of it to her, after having purchased it from the canons of Mainz and the Count of Hildesheim, to whom it belonged. The abbot and the monks had great difficulty in consenting to her leaving their neighborhood; they opposed it for some time; but she fell into a supernatural languor that reduced her to being unable to move; this usually happened to her when she was prevented from executing the orders she received from heaven, or when she herself delayed doing so; whereas, when she prepared to conform to them, and was no longer thwarted, her strength returned to her suddenly. The abbot therefore permitted her to go to the new monastery of Saint Rupert; then she rose from her bed, as if she had not been ill at all, and went there. This change caused as much pain to the people she was leaving as it brought joy to those she was going to honor with her presence.

God continued, in this new dwelling, to enlighten her with His celestial lights. It would be impossible to explain in any words other than her own how she received them; here is what she says about them in a letter to a monk of Gembloux: "I am always filled with a holy fear, because I recognize in myself no power to do good; but I stretch my hands toward God like two wings, and, with the wind of His grace blowing in between, I feel myself powerfully supported by His divine strength. From my childhood until now, that I am seventy years old, I have constantly had this vision in my mind: it seems to me that I am raised to the firmament and that I spread myself into the air toward very distant regions, and, in this state, I see in my soul great wonders that are manifested to me; I do not see them with the eyes of the body; I do not hear them with my ears; I do not discover them through any of my senses, not even through the thoughts of my heart, nor through ecstasies, for I have never had any; but, having my eyes open and being perfectly awake, I see them clearly, day and night, in the deepest part of my soul." It is not to be wondered at if, in this happy disposition, she had such ease in writing down all the things that the Holy Spirit revealed to her, not only in the natural order, but also in the supernatural order.

This state of continual contemplation did not prevent her from fulfilling the duties of active life and working, as much as possible, for the salvation of souls. She listened to the people who came to see her, penetrated the depths of their conscience, and always gave them salutary advice consistent with the state of their hearts. She answered others who consulted her by letter. The religious Wilbert proposed thirty very thorny questions to her, which she resolved with such profound and sublime insights that one cannot read this writing without admiration. At the instance of the abbot and the religious of Saint-Disibode, she wrote the life of this holy confessor, and, at the request of several others, she composed that of Saint Rupert. She composed homilies on all the gospels of the year, the reading of which shows that she spoke only by divine inspiration. She particularly explained the Gospel of Saint John, whose mysteries are incomprehensible to the greatest geniuses. She wrote more than two hundred and fifty letters to exhort various people to heroic acts of virtue. In them, she reveals, by a singular gift of God, the secrets of their interior, and gives instructions suitable to their state. Those she addressed to the archbishops of Trier, Mainz, and Cologne contain several predictions about the calamities that were to befall the world. In a word, there was no person of note in her time to whom she did not give divine counsel. She wrote to Eugene III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III, sovereign pontiffs; to emperors Conrad III and Frederick I; to the bishops of Bamberg, Speyer, Worms, Constance, Liège, Maastricht, Pra gue, and all Frédéric Ier Holy Roman Emperor with whom she corresponded. of Germany; to the bishop of Jerusalem, to several prelates of France and Italy; to a great number of abbots; to Saint Elizabeth of the Order of Cîteaux; to a quantity of priests, theologians, and philosophers of Europe: all these epistles are filled with mysteries and secrets that the Holy Spirit had revealed to her, and the responses of so many great men have been preserved at the monastery of Saint-Rupert.

She traveled through several cities in Germany to announce to the clergy and the people things that God had commanded her to manifest to them. The poorest had a share in her insights, as well as the powerful of the century: she did not refuse them letters of consolation when they asked for them, and, through her prayers, she obtained for them the graces they needed in their illnesses, miseries, and afflictions. She convinced Jews who came to question her about the Law and the Prophets, and proved to them that the mystery of the Incarnation, which they were still awaiting, was accomplished. She knew the hearts of those who came to her out of a spirit of curiosity, and told them truths so touching that they immediately changed their sentiments. She gave remedies to people who consulted her about their bodily or spiritual illnesses. She often had revelations concerning the salvation or damnation of those who came to visit her. She saw the glory to which some were to be raised in heaven, and the punishments that others were to suffer in hell. She made useful use of this discernment of spirits and consciences to govern her nuns. She anticipated their small disagreements, their sadness in their vocation, their laziness, and their cowardice in their regular duties. Everything she said was accompanied by so much sweetness and unction that one could not resist the impressions she made even in the innermost part of the soul.

But, although Our Lord favored his beloved Hildegard with such extraordinary graces and such abundant blessings, and honored her almost continuously with his holy visits, he did not fail to allow her to be extremely persecuted and afflicted in many ways. She had illnesses that can be said to have been beyond nature. She was once thirty days in such a pitiful state that one did not know if she was dead, or if her soul still animated her limbs, so withered and stiff did they appear. At other times her body was reduced to such weakness that one dared not even touch it, for fear of causing her to die. Sometimes it was frozen and as if iced over, sometimes it was all on fire with the ardor of the violent fevers that tormented her. It was nevertheless in these searing pains that she had the most beautiful visions, and that God communicated to her the greatest lights. We have already noted that her illness visibly increased when she did not promptly execute what was prescribed to her in her revelations. One day, she became blind for not having manifested a thing she had been ordered to declare, and she did not recover her sight until after having satisfied it. She also suffered much from the demons, who employed all their artifices to rob her of her humility, to shake her patience, and to make her lose her confidence in Jesus Christ. They attacked her with horrible temptations of blasphemy and thoughts of despair; they mingled, by divine permission, in her illnesses, and treated her, without however touching her soul, with all the cruelty that their rage could suggest; but she had the consolation of seeing angels destined to defend her against their fury. She saw several times a cherub, with a sword of fire in his hand, who chased them from her presence and forced them to withdraw into hell. She often saw these spirits of darkness in frightening furies, because instead of winning the slightest victory over her weakness, she always triumphed over their malice and used it to unite herself more to her God.

Thus, these were not the bloodiest persecutions she suffered, although they appear so terrible; the darts of slanderous tongues were very sensitive to her, because they fought against the signal favors she received from her Spouse. She was honored, applauded, and approved in the manner we have said; however, Providence still allowed the demon to stir up several people who caused her strange interior pains. Some doubted whether these revelations were not illusions rather than divine inspirations. Others said loudly that she was deceived and seduced, and that, moreover, it was not for a simple, ignorant, and unlettered girl to meddle in composing works of piety; that her alleged familiarities with the Holy Spirit were only hollow imaginations; that the visions she spouted should only pass for chimerical ideas, without any valid foundation, and that, finally, she should be prevented from speaking, instead of being consulted as an oracle. Some of these nuns even let themselves be carried away by murmuring against her, complaining of her exactitude, as too scrupulous, in making them keep the regular observances, and reproaching her that, through a daydream rather than a vision, she had withdrawn them from the Mount of Saint Disibod, where they lacked nothing, and which was the most pleasant dwelling in the world, to transfer them to the hill of Saint Rupert, an unhealthy and marshy place because of the proximity of the river Nahe, which empties into the Rhine, and where they lacked everything. But Hildegard always remained firm, constant, and tranquil in the midst of these storms. And if they were violent enough to touch her at their beginning, they never had the strength to bring her down, or even to shake her. As she had not raised herself when she was given praise, she did not let herself be brought down when she saw herself slandered. She looked at this adversity with the same eye with which she had envisioned prosperity, adoring incessantly in one and the other the divine Providence, from which alone she expected all her help. Thus God, taking her defense in hand, placed her above envy; he made her innocence appear with brilliance, punished her persecutors, and forced them to recognize their fault; finally, he showed, through several wonders, that she did nothing and had done nothing except by the movement and conduct of his Holy Spirit.

She healed several sick people who implored her assistance, delivered a seven-month-old child from a strange tumor that afflicted him in all his limbs, and restored health to a dying young girl and young man by having them drink water she had previously blessed. Two women who had lost their minds recovered them through her merits. Another, from Italy, suffering from a flow of blood, was cured by one of her letters. The mere touch of her garments and things that had served her operated admirable cures. She cast out demons from the bodies of the possessed and restored sight to a blind child. A young person named Lutgarde had such a violent passion that she fell into a languor that brought her to the brink of death. Her parents, learning from her own mouth the cause of her illness, sent her to the Saint to reveal her ailment and ask for the help of her prayers. Hildegarde immediately began to pray, then she blessed some bread, watered it with her tears, and sent it to the sick girl. No sooner had the young girl tasted it than she was entirely delivered from the passion that was withering her. Finally, our Saint performed a quantity of other miracles that would be too long to report here. They may be seen in the authors we will cite at the end of this summary. It must only be observed that, when she had performed some miraculous action, God permitted her pains and illnesses to increase extraordinarily, so that, as she herself confesses in her writings, she would always maintain herself in the sentiments of true humility and that the greatness of her revelations and the brilliance of the wonders she operated would not give birth in her mind to thoughts of pride and high self-esteem.

Such was the life of Saint Hildegard until the age of eighty-two; after having predicted her death, through a revelation she received, she went to join her celestial Spouse, whom she had sought alone on earth. It was on September 17, in the year of Our Lord 1179. At the hour of her passing, which occurred at the break of day, two rainbows were seen in the air, crossing one over the other across the entire hemisphere, toward the four corners of the world; and, at the point of their junction, there appeared a luminous body the size of the moon's disk, from the middle of which emerged a cross that, at first, was quite small, but then widened immeasurably and was further surrounded by other luminous circles, also laden with radiant crosses; from it gushed a marvelous brightness by which the entire mountain was illuminated. God undoubtedly wished to show by these symbols how much this holy virgin had suffered during her life, how, through her sufferings, she had made herself pleasing to Jesus Christ, and with what glory she was rewarded in heaven. Her body, which exhaled a very sweet odor, was honorably interred at the monastery of Bingen, which she had for so long sanctified by the practice of the most excellent virtues. Her tomb has been honored by several miracles.

She is represented: 1st at the moment when, as she breathed her last, a radiant cross appeared in the sky; 2nd carrying a church, as the founder of a monastery; 3rd visited by a hermit; 4th giving a chalice and money to a poor priest or hermit.

## CULT AND RELICS. — HER WRITINGS.

Saint Hildegard was buried at the monastery of Saint-Rupert, where a rich mausoleum was erected for her. This monastery having been pillaged and burned in 1632 by the Swedes, the Benedictine nuns who occupied it withdrew and carried with them the relics of their holy abbess to the priory of Eibingen, in the diocese of Mainz, of which Saint H ildegard Eibingen Site of the transfer of relics in the 17th century. was the founder. It is there that she has since received the honors that the great number of her miracles have caused to be rendered to her. Her name is celebrated in the annals of the Church of Germany. Her canonization, twice resumed, was not completed; but her cult is permitted and the decree of beatification was rendered. Her name is inserted in the Roman Martyrology.

The works we have of Saint Hildegard are: 1st her Letters, numbering one hundred and forty-five, including those that various persons addressed to her; 2nd the Scivias, or her visions and revelations, in three b Scivias Principal work recounting her visions. ooks; 3rd the book of Divine Works of the Simple Man, or Visions on all points of theology, in three parts; 4th the Solution of thirty-eight questions; 5th the Explanation of the Rule of Saint Benedict; 6th the Explanation of the Athanasian Creed; 7th the Life of Saint Rupert or Robert; 8th the Life of Saint Disibod; 9th On the Subtleties of the Diverse Natures of Creatures, in nine books. All these works are gathered in volume cxxviii of Migne's Patrologia Latina, through the care and with the notes of Doctor Renes.

- Acta Sanctorum; Dom Grillier; Life of Saint Hildegard, by Abbot Thierry, reported by Surius; the Annals of Cîteaux; History of the holy virgins of this Order, by Henriques; Nicolas Sératius, of the Society of Jesus, gave an abridgment of her life in chapter xxxvii of book II of his History of Mainz. It is in all these authors that we have found the particulars that we have reported in this history.