Laus Trinitati / Antiphon for the Trinity

by Hildegard von Bingen

English version by Barbara Newman
Original Language Latin

To the Trinity be praise!
     God is music, God is life
     that nurtures every creature in its kind.
Our God is the song of the angel throng
     and the splendor of secret ways
     hid from all humankind,
But God our life is the life of all.

-- from Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celstium revelationum, by Hildegard of Bingen / Translated by Barbara Newman

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Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

This beautiful song of praise by Hildegard von Bingen expresses so much of her mysticism. She sees Life flowing and flowering through all life. And she declares that life to be unquestionably divine! Elsewhere she refers to this so delightfully as God's "greening" of the world.

For Hildegard, there is a divine outpouring or radiance. That expression of God in and through all things is also perceived as music, as harmony.

"God is music, God is life..." God is the rhythm of existence -- and we are part of its thrum!








Laus Trinitati / Antiphon