A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

intertextuality in hildegard’s works 143
While the lion signifijies monks, the calf represents priests.27 Hildegard
urges chastity and sobriety on priests.28 The magistra’s appeals for chastity
echo the message of the Gregorian reforms and her own admonitions
to the clergy in Scivias and subsequent writings.29
From the lion and the calf, monks and priests, Hildegard moves to
those “whom they call” conversi, that is, the lay brothers who worked
for the monastery.30 She says that “many of them do not truly turn their
ways to God, but they value contrariness over rectitude and address
their superiors arrogantly, saying: ‘Who are they and what are these? And
what were we, or what are we?’”31 She concludes that they are like pseudoprophets,
and she discusses the difffering responsibilities of priests and
farmers, teachers, and masters as part of the divine order.32 Hildegard
enjoins the magistri of the lay brothers with the duty of reproaching and
correcting the conversi, “who refuse to work, and serve neither God nor
the world with perfection.”33 Mixing these divinely ordained roles is analogous,
she says, to pitting the symbolic roles of the four creatures against
each other.34 Hildegard sees the ambiguous status of lay brothers as a
risky impediment to spiritual life; the mixed character of their position in
the monastery seems to threaten its stability.35
Was Hildegard addressing a specifijic situation at Eberbach? The fijirst
known revolt of Cistercian lay brothers occurred in 1168 at Schönau, near
Heidelberg, hence not long before this letter was written.36 She specifijically
mentions the lay brothers’ refusal to work. Other letters exchanged
between Hildegard and the monks at Eberbach shed some light on
27 Letters, 1, 84R, p. 186; Epistolarium, I, 84R, p. 194, ll. 162–65.
28 Letters, 1, 84R, p. 186; Epistolarium, I, 84R, p. 194, ll. 166–71.
29 Speaking New Mysteries, pp. 26–30, 252–54.
30 James France discusses this letter in Separate but Equal: Cistercian Lay Brothers 1120–
1350 (Trappist, Ky., 2012), pp. 281–85.
31 Letters, 1, 84R, p. 186; Epistolarium, I, 84R, pp. 194–95, ll. 174–79: “ipsi conuersos
uocant, quorum plurimi se ad Deum in moribus suis non conuertunt ueraciter, quia contrarietatem
potius quam rectitudinem diligunt et opera sua cum sono temeritatis agunt, de
prelatis suis sic dicentes: Qui sunt et quid sunt isti? Et quid fuimus aut quid sumus nos?”
32 Letters, 1, 84R, p. 187; Epistolarium, I, 84R, p. 195, ll. 198–207.
33 Letters, 1, 84R, p. 187; Epistolarium, I, 84R, pp. 195–96, ll. 208–24, at p. 196, ll. 220–21:
“nec in die nec in nocte operatur, quoniam nec Deo nec seculo ad perfectum seruiunt.”
34 Letters, 1, 84R, p. 187; Epistolarium, I, 84R, p. 197, ll. 214–16.
35 Hildegard was opposed to mixing social classes in the same community, and she
incurred the ire of her Augustinian contemporary, Tenxwind, for the trappings of social
status that she allowed her nuns. See Speaking New Mysteries, pp. 32–33.
36 On Cistercian lay brothers, see Brian Noell, “Expectation and Unrest among Cistercian
Lay Brothers in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Journal of Medieval History 32
(2006): 253–74, and the various works cited there.