She begins the book by likening the world to a human body: the earth is the flesh, the rocks are the bones, the moisture of the stones is the marrow, the slate rocks are the toe and finger nails, the plants are the hair, and the dew is the perspiration. All plants are either hot or cold; so also are all animals. This is the radical division between them. The recipes given are profoundly silly. For a boil, house-flies are to be taken, their heads cut off, and they are to be arranged like herrings in a barrel round the swelling. A poultice is to cover all—but it is the flies that bring the gathering to a head. Here is one of the shortest of her botanical accounts—that of the meadow convolvulus. “The herb is cold, it has not great powers nor is it of much use. But if a man’s nails get scaly and crack, then let him grind up the convolvulus, mix with it a little quicksilver and lay it on his nails, tie a bit of rag round, and his nails will be lovely.”
Hildegarde wrote a commentary on the Rule of S. Benedict, another on the Athanasian Creed. She propounded difficult questions in Scripture, and solved them by her inner light, only making the difficulties greater, and always missing the simple meaning of a passage.
S. Hildegarde had her troubles. She did not get on very well with the Archbishops of Mayence. At the instigation of S. Bernard she inflamed the minds of the people with a fever of zeal against the Saracens, and exhorted to a crusade. This resulted in a frightful massacre of Jews at Mayence, instigated by a monk named Badulf. The Archbishop Henry, a mild, amiable man, did what he could to protect the unfortunate Israelites, and opened to them his palace. But a papal legate appeared on the scene, and the Chapter induced him to depose the archbishop. He appealed to Rome, but the cardinals were bribed to declare against him. He had chosen his confidential friend, Arnold of Selnhofen, to take what money he could scrape together to Rome and plead his cause. Arnold made the most solemn assurances of fidelity, and betrayed his trust. He used the money entrusted to him to purchase the deposition of his friend and his own advancement.
The people of Mayence were greatly incensed against Arnold, who was thrust on them by the pope himself, without election by the Chapter, and was invested by the pope the same day on which the friend was degraded whom he had betrayed. On reaching Mayence Arnold did nothing to appease the popular resentment; his court was magnificent, his servants were splendidly liveried, and his table was noted for its luxury. Knowing what a power Hildegarde was in the diocese, he wrote a hypocritical, canting letter to her, beseeching her prayers. She replied with a sharp admonition: “The living Light saith unto thee, Thou hast a form of zeal only, which I hate. Cleanse restlessness from thy soul, and cease from doing injustice to thy people. Rise up and turn to the Lord, for the time cometh speedily.”
Seeing the ferment of men’s minds increase, Arnold resolved on leaving Bingen, where he then was, to go into his cathedral city and put down all resistance with a high hand. He purposed lodging the first night in the monastery of S. James, outside the walls. Hildegarde warned him of his danger, but he would not listen. A friend, the abbot of Erbach, also cautioned him. “Bah!” scoffed the archbishop, “these Mainzers are dogs; they bark, but do not bite.” When Hildegarde heard this, she said, “The dogs have had their chains broken, and they will tear you to pieces.”
He scorned these warnings, and in June 1160 went to the monastery in which he had purposed to lodge. But he had rushed, unwittingly, into the jaws of the lion, for the abbot of S. James was his most deadly enemy. The abbot at once sent tidings to the city that the archbishop was there. A mob poured out of the city gates. The archbishop, hearing the roar of their voices and the tramp of their feet, was paralysed with fear; the rioters entered the abbey, rushed upon him, and a butcher split his head with an axe. The dead body was dragged forth and cast into a ditch, where the peasant women, coming to market, pelted it with rotten eggs and bad cheese.
In 1150 Christian was archbishop, but he was in Italy. He was a man of arms, who loved fighting, and had no relish for the duties of his position. During his absence Hildegarde got into difficulties with the administrator of the see. A certain young man had been buried in the cemetery attached to her monastery who had incurred excommunication. An order was sent her to dig the body up and throw it out of consecrated ground. This she refused to do. She insisted that the young fellow had been absolved and had received the last sacraments, and she furnished a vision in which she had been forbidden to exhume the body. But the administrator did not repose such confidence in her visions as to submit. An interdict was laid on her convent, so that the sisters were forbidden to recite their offices and to have the sacraments administered there.
No priest in the diocese dared disobey, and the whole convent was struck with paralysis. Hildegarde wrote, but could obtain no concession. Then she appealed to the military bishop, who was in Italy. The administrator sent his account of the affair, and the interdict was renewed. So time passed. Hildegarde still obstinately, and rightly, refused to have the body dug up and cast to the dogs. She wrote again to the archbishop, and finally obtained a removal of the interdict. As she complained, there had been no investigation into the facts—it had been a party move of spite against herself.
Although in 1170 Hildegarde was aged seventy-two, her literary energy did not fail. She still composed treatises, and continued to write letters in answer to those she received, or to thunder against those persons whose conduct deserved reprobation. Her correspondence extended from Bremen and the Netherlands, to Rome, and even to Jerusalem. Her denunciations of abuses, corruptions in the Church, were outspoken, and she even prophesied the fall of the empire and a reformation in religion; but the condition of affairs both in the state and in Christendom were so bad, that it required but little foresight to tell that such could not possibly last without a convulsion.
Her style is not without a certain amount of rude eloquence, but is involved. Those who took down her words were clearly not always able to make out the drift of what she said; but, indeed, she herself probably could not wholly explain them. The words poured forth in a stream, rolling her ideas about in confusion, and she was impatient of her secretaries meddling over-much with her revelations and prophecies, lest they should make sense indeed, but at the expense of their genuine character.