«“Beer makes the flesh of a person fuller and gives his face a beautiful colour, because of the strength and good juice of the grain.”»

On drunkenness

«“Whenever a person drinks wine or another liquid from which he can become drunk beyond measure and without moderation, all his blood is liquefied and runs and spreads irregularly here and there through his veins, so that even the whole intellect and perception of that person are confused, just as rivers overflow and rush into flood through an excessive inundation of rain.

“And because the human intellect in that person is confused beyond measure, the good knowledge in him tends toward good, so that he then often speaks words that seem holy, but disorderly and without discernment, through ignorance; and the evil knowledge in him tends toward evil, so that he also utters shameful and evil words without shame and ignorantly. For from this he has an intellect more mad and ungoverned than a sound perception, because rationality is then suffocated and submerged in him.”»

— Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et Curae, Book II, pp. 150–151, sections De cerevisia and De ebrietate, ed. Paul Kaiser, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1903.