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| Hildegard of Bingen, a mural at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard near Bingen |
Homilies 22 and 23 interpret the parable of the Laborers in
the Vineyard, and the differences between them reflect the same concerns as
Homilies 1 and 2. Homily 22 focuses on creation story (including the history of
salvation), but Homily 23 focuses on the soul (including moral explanations and
exhortations).
Homily 22 again illustrates Hildegard’s concern for the
natural world, including her ideas about God’s divinely appointed role and
function for all creatures. (Kienzle 2011: 175). Although the details of the
parable do not correlate exactly with the days of creation in Genesis 1,
Hildegard’s homily integrates them extensively. God is the householder of the
parable, and Hildegard equates the householder going out early in the morning
with the day that God created the heaven and earth. Likewise, the other aspects
of the parable all designate aspects of the seven days of creation and the
functions of all God’s creatures. The agreement with the first laborers, for
example, designates God’s work on the second day of creation when God divided
“waters from waters” (Gen. 1:6-8), and the “eleventh hour” in the parable
represents the sixth day of creation when God created humankind, male and
female. God then tells humankind “to work in accordance with what I appointed
for you,” which includes supervising the work of all the animals (Hildegard
2011: 102).
The sin of Adam, however, affected all of God’s creatures,
because they went with Adam “into the whirlwind.” The scene in the parable
where the landowner pays the workers each a denarius signifies the creatures
each receiving “particular functions according to their nature, with the result
that wild creatures were in the forest but domestic ones in the farmland with
humankind” (102-3). The laborers hired first in the parable correlate to the
animals who were created first in Genesis 1; they have a greater opinion of
themselves, according to Hildegard:
Led first to Adam were the ones who
had come forth first in creation, such as birds and the like; in their opinion
they would have greater potential in thee things than would the herds, since
they could both fly in the air and walk with humankind on earth.
These first creatures thus grumbled when the animals created
after them, who fulfill only one function—fish only swim and other animals only
walk—were given the same denarius for their work:
These
last, who were created after us, like the herds, labored one hour, because coming forth in their creation, they had
supported no other creature to be created after them, as the prior creatures
did; and you made them equal to us,
in the full and not half function of their nature; equal on the pastures of the earth alone, because the birds, herds,
and remaining creatures all feed at once from the earth alone. We have borne the burden, in our
estimation, of flying and walking, what we were going to do, the time of our
proceeding forth, and the heat of the
sun, the moon, and the vicissitude of the other creatures following us (103).
The laborers’ complaint against the owner of the vineyard,
then, represents the creatures’ complaint against God for the extra burdens
they had carried before the other creatures were created. God, however, replies
that God had assigned duties to all creatures justly and according to the
capabilities of each. In addition, God says, the Creator is allowed to do with
the creation whatever the Creator judges best, especially since the Creator had
created them “rightly and beautifully” (104).
My next post (I have two more about Hildegard) will cover Homily 23, unless I find something at AAR/SBL about the reception history of the parables that I should include first.
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