A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

hildegard of bingen and the hirsau reform 81
system of sign language followed at Cluny, Hildegard observes that Benedict
gave permission to speak when there was just reason.
Indeed, because it is almost inhuman for a human being always to remain
in silence and not to speak, the same father entrusted this to the power and
discernment of the abbot, just as he conceded many other things to him,
so that he could plan a suitable time when they might speak of honest and
necessary things with each other, and they might not be affflicted with the
tedium of unwise silence, since after permission for this kind of speaking,
they can be more suitably and fijirmly warned and constrained to the quiet
of silence.80
This is the same kind of psychology that she had used when counseling
against excessive disciplining of children, who might otherwise run away.
Hildegard has little time for the prescriptions of monastic detail that
William of Hirsau had sought to enforce, or for the emphasis on the letter
of the Rule, expounded by the Cistercians. Rather, she reads the Rule
as a work of spiritual instruction. Benedict instructs monks to recite the
psalms wisely (Ps. 46: psallite sapienter), a precept she understands about
singing joyfully and without tedium.81 With a number of the precepts of
the Rule, she recognizes that they were shaped by the time in which Benedict
lived. Thus, the reason for his forbidding the flesh of quadrupeds,
except for those who were weak, and not forbidding the eating of fowl
was that the way of life for monks of his age was unsophisticated, and
he did not wish to impose a general rule.82 She was particularly struck
by those passages of the Rule which spoke about the abbot acting with
humanitas. The apparent implication of the Rule that monks were not to
wear breeches was again a reflection of the fact that they were not normally
worn when Benedict lived.
But now in this time, since the behaviour of men is thus, it does not displease
God if monks use breeches because of the blasphemy of incest which
they can sample in nakedness of flesh, lest the naked in flesh, who might
touch flesh, are reminded of carnal sins.83
She chose to conclude her commentary by reflecting on Benedict’s precept
that great care should be taken with children up to their 15th year.
Before this age, they were still tender. At 15 they were like a tree coming
80 Ibid., p. 70.
81 Ibid., pp. 76–77.
82 Ibid., pp. 82–83.
83 Ibid., pp. 88–89.