1. Hidegarda z Bingen: Vízia 4, číslo 100
Zdroj: Fox, Matthew: Hildegard of Bingen's Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs.
(Bear & Company 2012).
When God looked upon the human countenance, God was exceedingly pleased. For had not God
created humanity according to the divine image andlikeness? Human beings were to announce all
God’s wondrous works by means of their tongues that were endowed with reason. For humanity is
God’s complete work. God is known to human beings, and for our sake Godcreated all creatures.
God has allowed us to glorify and praise God in the kiss of true love through our spirituality.
But the human species still needed a support that was a match for it. So God gave the first man a
helper in the form of woman, who was man’s mirrorimage, and in her the whole human race was
present in a latent way. God didthis with manifold creative power, just as God had produced in great
power the first man. Man and woman are in this way so involved with each other that one of them is
the work of the other (opus alterum per alterum). Withoutwoman, man could not be called man;
without man, woman could not be named woman. Thus woman is the work of man, while man is a
sight full ofconsolation for woman. Neither of them could henceforth live without the other. Man is
in this connection an indication of the Godhead while woman isan indication of the humanity of God’s
Son. And thus the human species sitson the judgment seat of the world. It rules over all creation.
Each creature is under our control and in our service. We human beings are of greater value than all
other creatures.
2. List od Hildegardy Bernardovi z Clairvaux, r. 1147
Zdroj: Fox, Matthew: Hildegard of Bingen's Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs. (Bear
& Company 2012).
Most praiseworthy Father Bernard, through God’s power you stand wonderfully in highest honor.
[…] I beseech you, father, by the living God, hear me in what I ask you.
I am very concerned about this vision which opens before me in spirit as a mystery. I have never
seen it with the outer eyes of the flesh. I am wretched and more than wretched in my existence as a
woman. And yet, already as a child, I saw great things of wonder which my tongue could never have
given expression to, if God’s spirit hadn’t taught me to believe.
Gentle father, you are so secure, answer me in your goodness, me, your unworthy servant girl,
whom from childhood has never, not even for one single hour, lived in security. In your fatherly love
and wisdom search in your soul, since you are taught by the Holy Spirit, and from your heart give
some comfort to your servant girl. […]
Please answer me: what do you make of all of this? I am a person who received no schooling
about external matters. It is only within, in my soul, that I have been trained. And that is why I speak
in such doubt. But I take consolation from all that I have heard of your wisdom and fatherly love.
I have not talked about this to anyone else, because, as I hear it said, there is so much divisiveness
among people. There is just one person with whom I have shared this, a monk [Volmar] whom I have
tested and whom I have found reliable in his cloistered way of life. I have revealed all of my secrets to
him and he has consoled me with the assurance that they are sublime and awe-inspiring.
I beg you, father, for God’s sake, that you comfort me. Then I will be secure. More than two years
ago, I saw you in my vision as a person who can look at the sun and not be afraid, a very bold man.
And I cried because I blushed at my faintheartedness.
Gentle father, mildest of men, I rest in your soul so that through your word you can show me, if
you wish, whether I should say these things openly or guard them in silence. For this vision causes me
a lot of concern about the extent to which I should talk about what I have seen and heard. For a time,
when I was silent about these things, I was confined to my bed with serious illnesses, so intense that I
was unable to sit up. This is why I complain to you in such sadness: I will be so easily crushed by the
falling wooden beams in the winepress of my nature, that heavy wood growing from the root which
sprang up in Adam through Satan’s influence and cast him out into a world where there was no
fatherland. […]
And may this sound, the power of the Divine, strike your heart and elevate your soul, so that you
do not grow stiffly indifferent through the words of this woman [Hildegard], since you yourself seek
out everything with God or with human beings or with any mystery until you press so far forward
through the opening of your soul that you discern all of these things in God. Farewell, live well in your
soul and be a strong warrior for God. Amen.
3. Hildegarda z Bingen: lekárske spisy
Zdroj: Berger, Margret (ed. & trans.): Hildegard of Bingen, On Natural Philosophy and
Medicine. Selections from Cause et Cure. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999).
Melancholic women
But there are other women who have haggard flesh, thick blood vessels, average-sized
bones, and blood that is more bluish than sanguineous. Their faces are a blend of greyish and
black color. These women are also windy, and wavering in their thoughts and wearisome
when they waste away as a result of annoyance. They are not very resilient, so that at times
they are weary from melancholia. At menstruation they suffer severe blood loss, and they are
sterile because they have a weak and fragile uterus. Therefore they can neither receive nor
retain nor warm man’s semen. Consequently they are healthier, stronger and happier without
husbands than with them, because they will become weak if they have been with husbands.
But men avoid them and shy away from them because they do not talk pleasantly to men and
because men love them only a little. If, at some time, these women feel carnal pleasure, it
will, however, pass quickly in them. But if they have robust and sanguine husbands,
occasionally some of these women can bear at least one child when they reach a sound age
like fifty. But if they have had different husbands whose nature is weak, they will not
conceive from them, but remain sterile. If their menstruation ceases sooner than is right for
the nature of women, they will at times suffer gout and swelling of the legs, or they will incur
an unsoundness of the head, brought on by melancholia. Or they will suffer back or kidney
pain or a rapid swelling of the body because waste matter and foulness, from which
menstruation should have purged their bodies, remain enclosed in them. If they do not receive
any help in their infirmity, so that they are not freed from it by the help of God or by
medicine, they will die very soon.