Studies m Sanctity
1We propose to publish during the next few weeks a series of studies of saintly characters who have in different ages and different manners exercised a transforming influence on tho life of their day. Next week Mr. G. K. Chesterton will write on St. Thomas Aquinas.]
V.—St. Hildegard (1098-1179)
welcomed,
and the sick were care. " Convent
Until 1147, hoWever, few had suspected that the Abbess Speaking of her own life she says that: of the Rupertsberg was a woman of genius. But when the
young life was swept for a moment into the main and wrote down the results of her researches in two works current of European history. On Christmas Eve, 1105, entitled the Physica and the Causac of Curac. Some of a small troop of soldiers, with a prisoner in their midst; her remedies sound curious : " If you suffer from dcpres- galloped over the snow to the secluded Castle, of sion," she writes, " take a number of young ants, lay them Bockelheim in the Rhineland. The soldiers handed their inside a cloth, and lay the cloth against your heart until prisoner over to the care of Ilildebert, the lord of the you perspire ; you will then recover your spirits." This castle, and galloped away. Thus for a few months - sounds rather like mediaeval moonshine, until we remember Hildegard's father became the gaoler of the famous that some doctors of the present day recommend sub- Penitent of Canossa, the hero of that " spiritual duel in cutaneous injections of formic acid as a remedy for the snow " which has made so deep and enduring an depression in certain cases of neurasthenia. From far impression on the imagination of Christendom. Legend and near the sick came to Hildegard and " few went away pictures the seven-year-old Hildegard visiting Henry IV in unhealed."
his gloomy dungeon, and " speaking to him of Heaven.". As Hildegard grew older the fire of her spirit blazed
At the age of eight Hildegard, as the tenth child of her higher. The corruption of the Church, the prevalence parents, Hildebert and Mcchthild, was - dedicated to the of simony, the laxity of the Religious Orders, and the service of God, and placed under the care of a certain rapid extension of the Catharist heresy filled her with " holy anchorcss," Jutta von Spot:harm whose cell was indignation and anguish of soul. " The Word of the attached to the Benedictine monastery of the Disiboden- Lord came unto her," and in spite of her difficult health berg, about a mile away from Bockelheim. Here, in this and the hardships of mediaeval travel she went out into tiny convent among the trees, Hildegard grew up. Her the world to preach, admonish and reconcile. People powers of observation were well developed ; and the flocked to hear her. She must have been a striking figure, delicate child matured into a woman of strong standing in the pulpit of some great German cathedral, character, independent judgement and great ability. . clad in her black. Benedictine habit, or, on great festivals, When Jutta died in 1186, Hildegard was elected in pure white. Much of her preaching was directed Superior in her stead. During the following decade her against the errors of the Cathari, but she always pleaded fame seems to have spread through the neighbouring dis- that the heretics themselves should be treated with mercy.
triet, and the monks of the Disibodenberg took a natural When we seek for the unifying element in her many- pride in the fact that Hildegard was under their protec- sided personality we find it in her inner life. Spiritually tion. Great was their dismay and anger, therefore, when gifted from her earliest years, the long solitude and Hildegard announced that she felt it right to move to the 'quietness of life on the Disibodenberg gave her time to neighbourhood of Bingen, in order to found an independent grow. When, towards the age of fifty, Hildegard came convent of her own. After a succession of trying delays out into public life she was prepared, and all her later Hildegard finally gained her point. In the autumn amazing activity was supported by and sprang out of her of 1147 she moved to the Rupertsberg above Bingen? life of prayer. Her day might begin " with a vision of that Light I sometimes see another Light . . .. Lax Vivene. regarded with suspicion, and she would not allow her nuns When and how I see it I cannot tell, but sometimes when I soo it all
"From the day of her birth she was entangled in a net of suffering. . She never had any confidence in herself, nor any
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