Letter CCCLXVI. To the Abbess Hlldegarde.2

(A.D. 1146.)

He modestly rejects her praises: he warns her to recognize what she owes to the Grace of God: and begs her prayers for Jiim and for his brethren.¹²

To his beloved daughter in Christ, HILDEGARDE, Brother BERNARD, called Abbot of Clairvaux, wishes health and all that the prayer of a sinner can obtain.

It seems to me that certain persons think very differently of so humble a person as myself, from that which my own conscience knows to be true: and that it is to be attributed not to my merits, but to the simplicity of mankind. Yet I hasten to reply to the sweet and' charitable letter which you have had the goodness to write to me, although the number of my occupations obliges me to do so more briefly than I could wish. I congratulate you on the Grace of God which is in you, and kindly warn you to be careful to respond to it in a disposition of entire humility and devotion in order that you may retain this grace, knowing that God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble (S. James iv. 6). That is the advice which I give to you, as far as in me lies, and the prayer that I make for you. But what am I to be able either to teach, or to give warning, to one in whom is the secret intuition and the anointing which teaches all things. For you are said to be so favoured as that the hidden things of Heaven are revealed to you, and that the Holy Spirit makes known to you those things which pass man's understanding. Wherefore I rather entreat and humbly pray that you would make remembrance of me before God, and of those who are joined with me in spiritual society. For I trust that when you are united to God in the Spirit, you will be able to help and profit us much. For the fervent prayer of a righteous person availeth much (S. James v. 16). As for me, I pray for you continually, that you maybe strengthened in good, that your soul may be perfected, and you may be enabled to attain unto eternal joys: so that those who have put their hope in God may not be led to despair by seeing your failure: but may be, on the contrary, strengthened in good, and may progress from one degree of good to another, by beholding the blessings and graces which you have received from God.

Footnotes

1. J She was the Abbess of the Monastery of Mont S. Rupert, near Bingen, in the Diocese of Mayence, ancl was celebrated for her prophetical utterances. Among the Letters of hers which are preset ved in the BiHiotheca Palnim, there is one in which she congratulates Bernard on the zeal which he had displayed in the preaching of the Crusade, and says that she " had seen him as it were a man in the sun two years before." John of Salisbury asks Magister Girard for some account of her visions, and says that she was very acceptable to Pope Eugenius. ↩

2. Formerly No. 386; the former No. 366 is now No. 410. ↩