Do I live in Paradise? The majestic linden tree that lives in front of my house, and which last month was naked, is now showing off its Spring dress in its full glory. The hills are so incredibly green! It’s a vital, shouting, joyful green that only the Hildegardian word viriditas (“verdancy”) can describe. The grasses laugh with the joy of life! Hildegard’s own words.
In the distance, I can see the skyline of a medieval village with its towers. It’s my new human community, a town of almost 700 people, which is actually big when compared to the hamlet of about 12 people where I reside. All villages around here boast at least one large square tower dating back to the 11th century, situated at the top of the hill. As those towers are in sight of each other; I can imagine colored flags being waved from them as signals of good or bad news.
A nearby village, of about the same size, but situated in the plain, was the capital de facto of the Holy Roman Empire for about two weeks, when Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa came down from Germany in the 12th century to punish those bad Italians who wanted freedom for themselves. He actually burnt Milan down to ashes on that occasion, as well as other cities.
Frederick was a contemporary of Hildegard, who was thirty years his senior. Apparently she was initially taken in by his energetic approach to matters of state, and he granted certain privileges to her monasteries. But when his will to dominate burst out, everything changed. He opposed the pope, who defended the independence of the Italian cities, to the point of appointing another cleric as “the true pope.” Then Hildegard chastized him with fiery letters, which are still preserved. She called him a “little boy” and “a madman” and told him to “beware, lest your blindness in government cause your ruin.”
Hildegard was in fact convinced that “when you lack the verdancy of justice, your soul is dry, totally without tender goodness, totally without illuminating virtue.” Viriditas for her was not just in nature or just in people; it was the divine vital energy pervading all, but that all can lose. With the difference that trees go through a yearly cycle, and always get their verdancy back, while people are subject to the risk of becoming dry for a much longer time, and causing destruction around themselves.
Of this sort are my musings while I stroll around my house. The comparisons one can make with today’s news are uncanny, aren’t they? Will people ever change? Will emperors always be around to bring misery on verdant lives, both the lives of people and those of other creatures?
The linden tree which the city map declares as mine — as if you could own such a beautiful creature — will most likely be here well after my departure from this house and this life. It’s pretty well settled and healthy. It’s probably not older than 200 years, but it can go on for at least as long.
I just read that Pope Leo, who is presently in Algeria for a state visit, went to pray under an olive tree that was already over 1,000 years old when Saint Augustine used to sit at its feet. If we don’t tear all of them down, it is possible that trees will silently witness the demise of our species while bringing verdancy to this earth, year after year.
Although at times I think that I live in Paradise, there is no way I can isolate myself from the news of lunacy, hate, and destruction which all of you constantly hear as well. Nor can I separate my conscious mind from its depths, with the accompanying turmoils and intuitions and longings. I have chosen, however, a vantage point which works for me, and hopefully will help me breathe in as much viriditas as possible.
Banner Image: Viriditas embodied: the verdant hills of the Italian countryside. Photo by Gianluigi Gugliermetto, used with permission.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you have a vantage point which allows you not to shelter from the news or avoid engaging, but to breathe in enough verdancy and thus keep thriving? What is it?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Quotes from Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century, pp. 33- 34
Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works: With Letters & Songs
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
LETTERS TO POPE FRANCIS: Building a Church with Justice & Compassion
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
3 thoughts on “Diary from the Italian Countryside – part 3”
Thank you, Gianluigi, today’s picturesque and bucolic DM resonates deeply in my “neck of the woods” in the Appalachian foothills. No centenary linden tree or medieval villages in sight from my windows, but majestic fir trees and budding lilacs that provide me plenty of verdancy as an antidote to the toxic fumes of national and international news. The color match between Barbarossa and the orange king baby is uncanny indeed. I did not read Hildegard’s letters, but your comments make them sound like the daily meditations of her time. Long live “your” linden tree friend!
Yes, my wife and I have our 2 1/2 acre verdant property with a variety of trees that I affectionately call our Lone Star Gaia Ranch of Beautiful Trees. It’s our little paradise and home that I’m grateful for and where I contemplate, read, and pray for our turbulent world and suffering humanity…
Those of us blessed with some wealth and an appetite for rural rather than urban settings can share your appreciation of verdure undisturbed by storms and invasive insects. But as even Hildegard and Francis of Assisi knew, there are illness, various evils and finally death in bucolic settings. A painting from older days is described as illustrating lush flowers and trees, with a human skull in the foreground next to a scrap of paper reading, “Et in Arcadia ego” (“I also lived in Arcadia,” the mythic place of natural ease and vibrant youth). As members of Christ’s mystical body, we have great reasons to feel peaceful and secure; and we are conscious that throughout the world our human kin suffer and die, often unjustly, violently, from unpreventable diseases or careless accidents. As Jesus said, “Fear is unnecessary; what is needed is trust.”