A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

264 debra l. stoudt
Hildegard is affflicted by God with physical ailments when she refuses to
write down and therefore reveal her visionary experiences; she also suffers
mental torment when she acknowledges that she has not been God’s
faithful servant. The Vita notes as well that Hildegard experienced illness
“as often as she hung back in feminine alarm or doubted that the purposes
of the divine will would be achieved.”71 Like Tristitia Seculi (Worldly Sorrow),
as described above, the holy woman serves as the catalyst for her
own sufffering.
The responses of others to God’s message are occasionally the source
of Hildegard’s maladies as well. When individuals doubt her message or
fail to heed her advice, she also takes to her sickbed, as when she wishes
to establish a new community for the religious women at Rupertsberg,
despite the remonstrations of Abbot Kuno and some of the brothers at
Disibodenberg. As soon as the men yield to Hildegard’s wishes—which
are also God’s plan—she recovers.72 With regard to the contentious
move to Rupertsberg, Hildegard is not the only one plagued by physical
maladies; the monk Arnold, who opposes the move, is struck with a
life-threatening swelling of the tongue—an appropriate afffliction for one
whose words have caused such discord—but as soon as he vows to withdraw
his objections, he recovers immediately.73 In these scenes, illness
serves as a barometer of God’s pleasure or displeasure with his servants;
here sickness is equated with punishment—not because of sin—but
rather because of disobedience, or not yielding oneself fully to God’s will,
a theme—and a humility topos—found in the writings of other medieval
religious as well.
As her writings attest, Hildegard is concerned not only with the origins
of sickness and disease but also with the curing of them. The customary
methods of healing described in the medical-scientifijic works involve
natural substances, specifijically plants and minerals, with a brief descripmihi
placuit excussi in magnis mirabilibus trans metam antiquorum hominum, qui in me
multa secreta uiderunt, posui; sed in terram straui illum, quod se non erigeret in ulla elatione
mentis suae. . . . Ipse enim in medullis et in uenis carnis suae doluit, constrictum
animum et sensum habens atque multam passionem corporis sustinens, ita quod in eo
diuersa securitas non latuit, sed in omnibus causis suis se culpabilem aestimauit.”
71 Silvas, Jutta and Hildegard, p. 147; V. Hild., p. 12: “et quotienscumque feminea trepidatione
tardasset uel dubitasset superne uoluntatis peragere negotia.”
72 V. Hild., pp. 10–12.
73 Ibid., pp. 10–11: “tanta uexatione subito percussus est corporis, ut de uita quoque
desperaret linguamque in immensum turgentem ore continere non posset . . . moxque ut
illic uouit, quod ultra non obstaret, sed pro posse anniteretur.”