From Scivias to the Liber Divinorum Operum: Hildegard's Apocalyptic Imagination and the Call to ...

13 Pages·2000·0.17 MB·English

4Th4e Journal of Religiojuos uHirstnoray l of religious history
Vol. 24, No. 1, February 2000
CONSTANT J. MEWS
From Scivias to the Liber Divinorum Operum:
Hildegard’s Apocalyptic Imagination and
the Call to Reform
This paper considers Hildegard’s use of apocalyptic imagery so as to elucidate her
attitude to the cause of reform, in particular the question of whether she espouses
fundamentally traditional attitudes to the social order (as for Haverkamp and
Flanagan) or whether she is a radical apocalyptic preacher (as for Kerby-Fulton). I
argue that although admirers like Gabeno of Eberbach culled ideas from her later
visionary writing that reinforce an image of Hildegard as developing a radical
vision of history, Hildegard’s original apocalyptic vision (as articulated in Scivias)
offers a call tomoral rather than institutional reform. After she left Disibodenberg,
she became more interested in the destiny of humanity as a whole than with ecclesia
as an institutional structure. Her call to reform, however, is first of all presented in
terms of the restoration of health to the body and as a general lament of worldliness
and greed in the church, rather than as a vision of historical change.The label “apocalyptic” regularly conjures up images of impending collapse
of the established order. There is a long tradition, too widely diffused to be
commented upon here, of presuming that apocalyptic speculation is somehow
always at odds with established standards of rationality and respectability.
Certainly, dreams of a new millennium have often been used by minority
groups to look forward to a new vision of the future. Yet it is far from certain
that apocalyptic visions necessarily look forward to the overthrow of the
established order. Just as R. I. Moore has cast doubt in the keynote paper
of this special issue on the notion that the year 1000 witnessed a wave of
popular heresies, all looking forward to the overthrow of a newly imposed
feudal order, so we also need to reconsider the role of apocalyptic prophecy
in the twelfth century. Apocalyptic prophecies may look forward to a wither-
ing away of the social order. On the other hand, they can also be used to call
fact articulate very traditional perspectives.
The question of whether or not apocalyptic thought looks forward to a
new direction in history is particularly relevant in the case of Hildegard of
Bingen, whose many devotees offer widely contrasting interpretations of her
Constant J. Mews lectures in history at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
44
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hildegard’s apocalyptic imagination 45
thought.1 While German Catholic scholarship has often emphasized Hildegard’s
debt to monastic tradition (sometimes identified as “German symbolism”),
Matthew Fox made her widely known within English-speaking circles in the
1980s as the prophet of what he called “creation-centred theology.”2 Another
approach to Hildegard’s thought has been to consider its feminine imagery,
the angle taken by Barbara Newman in her historically nuanced study of her
“theology of the feminine,” which locates her thought within a tradition of
sapiential theology, centred around the feminine figure of Wisdom.3 Hildegard
can also be seen as one of the most imaginative apocalyptic thinkers inmedieval
tradition, a line of thought which I have adopted in an earlier study.4 Kathryn
Kerby-Fulton has reminded us that Hildegard was most widely remembered
in the later Middle Ages (and indeed even into the seventeenth century) for
her apocalyptic prophecies about the future, particularly as culled by Gebenoof
Eberbach in his Mirror of Future Times.5 Kerby-Fulton argues that “herlasting
impact was not in the domain of reformist spirituality, but in her contributionto
the theology of salvation history, especially her novel views about the church’s
future and its final end.”6 Her analysis of Hildegard as an apocalyptic radical
is very different from that of Alfred Haverkamp and Sabina Flanagan, whoboth
emphasize the traditionalism of her hierarchical vision of the social order.7
1. Over three thousand publications are listed by Marc-Aeilko Aris et al., eds, Hildegard von
Bingen: Internationale Wissenschaftliche Bibliographie, Quellen und Abhandlungen zur
Mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte 84 (Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische
Kirchengeschichte, 1998).
2. Fox authored or promoted a number of books relating to Hildegard, all published by Bear &
Co., of Santa Fe, New Mexico: Matthew Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen (1985);
Scivias (1986), translated by Bruce Hozeski; Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with
Letters and Songs (1987) [an incomplete translation by Robert Cunningham of Hildegard’s Liber
Divinorum Operum, not from the original Latin text, but from the German translation made by
Heinrich Schipperges, Welt und Mensch, published in Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1965].
3. Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), reissued with a new preface, bibliography
and discography in 1997.
4. “Hildegard of Bingen: The Virgin, the Apocalypse and the Exegetical tradition,” in Wisdom
Which Encircles Circles: Papers on Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, Medi-
eval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI: 1996), 27–42. See
also Bernard McGinn, “Apocalypticism in the Middle Ages: An Historiographical Sketch,”
Mediaeval Studies 37 (1975): 252–86; Bernard McGinn, ed., Visions of the End. Apocalyptic
Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), p. 97; Bernard
McGinn, Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: HarperCollins,
1994), 128–32; Richard K. Emmerson, “The Apocalypse in Medieval Culture,” in The Apoca-
lypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Bernard McGinn and Richard Kenneth Emmerson (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1992), 298–9, and Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval
Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981); Ann
Williams, ed., Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves (London:
Longman, 1980). On the broader apocalyptic tradition, see Richard J. Baukham, The Fate of the
Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
5. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press, 1990), chap. 2.
6. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “Prophet and Reformer: ‘Smoke in the Vineyard’,” in Voice of the
Living Light, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1998), 70–90, esp. 72.
7. Sabina Flanagan, “‘For God Distinguishes the People of Earth as in Heaven’: Hildegard of
Bingen’s Social Ideas,” Journal of Religious History 22 (1998): 14–34; Alfred Haverkamp,
“Tenxwind von Andernach und Hildegard von Bingen,” in Institutionen, Kultur and Gesellschaft
im Mittelalter. Festschrift für Josef Fleckenstein zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (Sigmaringen, 1984),
515–48.
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46 journal of religious history
How are we to steer our way between these very different interpretations?
Part of the problem is that insufficient account has been taken of theevolution
of her thought between the writing of Scivias, largely composed between
1141 and 1147/48, when she gained papal approval at Trier in 1147/48, and
her last great composition, the Book of Divine Works (1163–74). Flanagan
and Haverkamp base their arguments about Hildegard’s hierarchical social
theory largely from her writing in Scivias, as well as on her reply (c. 1150) to
Tenxwind’s accusation that she was only accepting into her community women
of her own social class. Kerby-Fulton, on the other hand, bases her inter-
pretation of Hildegard as a radical apocalyptic preacher not on Scivias, but
on apocalyptic sermons that she wrote after she had established herself at
Rupertsberg. While a case can be made for Hildegard’s growing radicalism in
her vision of the church after she acquired papal approval, her sense of future
history cannot be separated from her vision of moral reform, presented in
terms of the restoration of health to the body.8 One way of considering the
character of her apocalyptic imagination is to compare the visions which she
describes in the last part of Scivias with those in the corresponding section of
the Book of Divine Works.9 It is not our intention here to enter the controversy
about the extent to which she designed the visual images found in the
Rupertsberg codex of Scivias or in the thirteenth-century Lucca copy of the
Book of Divine Works.10 Keiko Suzuki has observed that, although these
illuminations attempt to record what Hildegard describes in the text of her
visions, they do not match the text identically.11 Her visions need first of all
to be imagined from the descriptions that she gives of them, rather than
studied from the illuminations. In Scivias these images are concerned above
all with ecclesia (church). In the Book of Divine Works, by contrast, herinterest
is in creation as a whole, and in humanity in particular.
Hildegard’s debt to the Book of Revelation is evident from the outset of
Scivias. Just as John the Divine (always considered to be the same person as
John the Evangelist) heard a great voice saying, “Write what you see in a
8. On Hildegard’s use of organic imagery relating to health and life in her thought, see Con-
stant J. Mews, “Religious Thinker: ‘A Frail Human Being’ on Fiery Life,” in Newman, ed.,
Voice of the Living Light, 52–69.
9. Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkötter and Angela Carlevaris, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio
Mediaeualis [CCCM] 43–43A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978); Liber divinorum operum (hereafter
cited as LDO), ed. Albert Derolez and Peter Dronke, CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996). In
this edition, the first four visions are identified as LDO 1.1–4, the fifth vision as LDO 2.1, and
visions six to ten in the traditional numbering as LDO 3.1–5.
10. Madeleine H. Caviness argues that Hildegard herself designed these images in “Hildegard
as Designer of the illustrations to her Works,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of herThought
and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 29–62, and
“Artist: ‘To See, Hear, and Know All at Once,’” in Newman, ed., Voice of the Living Light,
110–24. By contrast, Liselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch argues that they were produced after Hildegard’s
death in “Die Rupertsberger ‘Scivias’ Handschrift. Überlegungen zur ihrer Entstehung,” in
Hildegard von Bingen: Prophetin durch die Zeiten. Zum 900. Geburtstag, ed. Edeltraud Forster
(Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 340–58 and Die Miniaturen im “Liber Scivias” der Hildegard von
Bingen: Die Wucht der Vision und die Ordnung der Bilder (Weisbaden: Reichert, 1998).
11. Keiko Suzuki, Bildgewordene Visionen oder Visionserzählungen: Vergleichende Studien
über die Visionsdarstellungen in der Rupertsberger “Scivias” — Handschrift und im Luccheser
“Liber divinorum operum” — Codex der Hildegard von Bingen (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998).
Suzuki doubts that the Lucca illustrations are based on a lost exemplar from Hildegard’s day.
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hildegard’s apocalyptic imagination 47
book and send it to the seven churches” (Rev. 1:10), so Hildegard is in-
structed to write “what you see and hear.” Like John, she first sees a brilliant
figure who gives her the message that she must deliver to others. In the Book
of Revelation, separate messages are given to each of the seven churches.
Hildegard by contrast explicitly directs Scivias to those who are familiar with
Scripture, but do not proclaim its message: “O human being, who are weak
from the dust of the earth and ash from ashes, cry out and speak about the
way to pure salvation, until those are instructed, who see the marrow of the
letters [of Scripture], but do not wish to speak out or proclaim, because they
are lukewarm and sluggish in keeping the iustitia of God. In this way unlock
the enclosure of hidden things which they hide timidly in a hidden field
without fruit.”12 Having emphasized in her prologue that she had no capacity
to engage in formal exegesis of the words of the text, she directs her message
to those who have knowledge of Scripture, but do not proclaim its message.
Like John the Divine, Hildegard is giving a warning to Christians who do not
live out their vocation. The concept of iustitia Dei, central to Hildegard’s
thought, is derived from St Paul rather than from the Book of Revelation. The
common translation of iustitia as “justice” can disguise its meaning for medi-
eval Christians as the moral righteousness fully manifest in the person of
Christ (Rom. 3:21).13 For Hildegard iustitia is the precondition for virtue, not
just a social condition: “He sent his Son into the world to be the capstone of
the corner that faces east, made up of the righteousness (iustitia) first pre-
figured in Noah and perfected in the Incarnation of the Son.”14 Hildegarddraws
her visionary technique from the Book of Revelation. Just as John the Divine
sees a vision of the ultimate triumph of the virtuous, the defeat of evil and the
establishment of a Jerusalem with its heavenly liturgy, so Hildegard looks
forward to the establishment of the true ecclesia, built by the Virtues. Scivias
closes with the same warning as the Book of Revelation, casting anathema on
anyone who takes anything away from the words of the prophecy.15
Hildegard’s personification of ecclesia as a woman continues a traditional
prophetic image of Israel as a bride, marked out for union with her divine
spouse. Such writing served to stir up Christian leaders to act against the
threats confronting Jerusalem, often presented as a bride held in captivity.16
12. Scivias 1.1, CCCM 43.8: “O homo, quae fragilis es de puluere terrae et cinis de cinere,clama
et dic de introitu incorruptae saluationis, quatenus hi erudiantur, qui medullam litterarum uidentes
eam nec dicere nec praedicare uolunt, quia tepidi et hebes ad conseruandam iustitiam Dei sunt,quibus
clausuram mysticorum resera quam ipsi timidi in abscondito agro sine fructu celant.” Subsequent
references are to the book, vision, and chapter (without page number), of the Führkötter-Carlevaris
edition of Scivias. My translation is deliberately more literal than that of Columba Hart and Jane
Bishop, Scivias, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1990).
13. Kerby-Fulton does not allude to this fundamental Pauline meaning when she argues that
iustitia is “a key word in Gregorian polemics, referring originally to the ideal of the church’s
liberty or freedom to exercise power over all spiritual affairs” in “Prophet and Reformer,” 86.
14. Scivias 3.2.16. Cf. Scivias 3.2.27: “Filium suum misi in mundum, in capite scilicet anguli
qui respicit ad orientem, hoc est in iustitia quae primum praesignata est in Noe, per admonitionem
Spiritus sancti praefigurantem perfecta illam iustitiam quae declarata est in incarnatione Filii Dei....”
15. Scivias 3.12.16. Cf. Rev. 22:18–19.
16. On this theme, see Edith McEwan Humphrey, The Ladies and the Cities: Transformation
and Apocalyptic Identity in Joseph and Asanoth, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse and The Shepherd of
Hermas (Sheffield: University of Sheffield Press, 1995).
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48 journal of religious history
Conversely, an individual or a community could also be stereotyped as a
demonic woman, like Jezebel prophetess of Thyatira (Rev. 2:20–1) or Babylon
itself (Rev. 17:1–12). While Barbara Newman rightly underscores the origin-
ality of Hildegard’s treatment of these feminine images, she does so in order
to communicate a quite traditional sense of respect for moral virtue. In Scivias,
she laments that ecclesia has been corrupted by moral inadequacy, but does
not criticize the ecclesiastical order or look forward to the overthrow of
established institutions. In a work written before she had obtained official
approval, she criticizes a love of novelty for its own sake, and emphasizes the
authority of the priesthood, a role that she denies to women.17
Hildegard saw herself not as a priest, but as a prophet. In the Acts of the
Apostles, Luke presents Peter as affirming that Joel’s prophecy (2:28) about
sons and daughters prophesying had been fulfilled at Pentecost. He subse-
quently describes the four daughters of Philip as prophets (Acts 21:9). St Paul
makes clear in the first letter to the Corinthians that prophets had a distinct
place within the early church (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:28–9; 2:8; 14:5), but maintained
that women had to remain quiet, as they had no permission to speak (1 Cor.
14.34–5).18 That women did exert prophetic leadership in the early Church is
evident from the condemnation in Revelation 2:19–20 of the woman of Thyatira
who proclaimed herself a prophet and taught that Christians could eat food
sacrificed to idols. This negative picture of a female prophet contrasts with
Luke’s account in Acts 16:13–15 of how Lydia, a wealthy woman of Thyatira,
opened her heart to Paul’s teaching and insisted on welcoming both Paul and
Luke into her house (Acts 16:13–15). Scripture provided Hildegard with
some precedent for prophecy, although its testimony was far from consistent.
It has often been observed that Hildegard was in part inspired by The
Shepherd of Hermas, an apocalypse from the first half of the secondcentury.19
Hildegard may also have been influenced by inspirational texts like the Pas-
sion of Perpetua and Felicity, compiled either by Tertullian of Carthage or
someone in his circle. It preserves autobiographical narratives in which both
Perpetua and her fellow martyr Saturus describe visions of their imminentmar-
tyrdom (203 ce).20 Although not strictly apocalypses, these autobiographical
accounts are introduced as evidence that the Holy Spirit was still inspiring
17. Scivias 2.5.28; 2.6.76.
18. Antoinette Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction Through Paul’sRhetoric
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990).
19. The Greek text is edited with a French translation by Robert Joly, Hermas le Pasteur,
Sources chrétiennes 53 (Paris: Cerf, 1958). The Latin translation of The Shepherd, printed
alongside Scivias by Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples in Liber trium uirorum et trium spiritualium
uirginum (Paris, 1513), is printed alongside the Greek text in PG 2.891–1012. English trans-
lations are by H. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd edn, ed. and revised
by Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989), 194–290 and by Kirsopp
Lake in the Loeb volume, The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 2 (London: Heinemann, 1913). Its influ-
ence on Hildegard is discussed by Hans Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen
Hildegard von Bingen (Leipzig: Teubner, 1930), 51–6. See also Peter Dronke, “Arbor Caritatis”,
Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett, ed. P. L. Heyworth (Oxford: Oxford University Press
1981), 221–31 and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 85–96.
20. Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, ed. and trans. Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the
Christian Martyrs, 106–131.
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hildegard’s apocalyptic imagination 49
new prophecies and visions in women and men alike. Perpetua’s vision of
how she overcame a dragon and climbed a ladder into an immense garden,
where she saw thousands of people who were all clad in white, like the vision
of her compatriot Saturus, of the martyrs as closer to the angels of God than
the bishop or the presbyter, serve to identify the true ecclesia, as distinct from
its institutional structure. This prophetic movement, very similar to that in
Asia Minor (notably strong at Thyatira) led by Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla
in the late second century, may originally have been recognized by the bishop
of Rome, prior to a hostile campaign led by a certain “Praxeas.”21 In the
Christianized empire of the fourth century, the views of Praxeas rather than
of Tertullian became normative. For Hildegard to find a precedent for female
visionary prophets, she needed to look at the example of some of the earliest
saints of the Church rather than at the canonical texts of ecclesiasticaltradition.
Hildegard’s own sense of prophetic vocation was also undoubtedly influ-
enced by exposure to the ideas of Rupert of Deutz (c. 1075–1129).22 Rupert
compared Scripture to a field, open to all people, in which there was buried
treasure waiting to be discovered beyond what had been uncovered by the
Fathers.23 This image recalls Hildegard’s own comment that too manyChristian
exegetes kept the meaning of Scripture buried as a treasure in a field. Rupert
was captivated by the warnings of John the Divine to the seven churches, as
an opportunity to reflect on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.24 In another treatise
he justifies his argument that the Holy Spirit continues to “blow where it
wills” (John 3:8) by citing the example of both a woman and a man who have
experienced the grace of the Holy Spirit. The young woman, a certain
Waldrada, is worrying about a marriage that has been planned for her when
she is overwhelmed by an experience of the Holy Spirit which she experi-
ences as a fire descending on her. Her mother, sleeping next to her, wakes up
thinking the house is on fire. Waldrada subsequently became a recluse. The
other example Rupert gives is of a certain man who had experienced a long
bout of depression about his situation, but then saw heaven open and some-
thing like shining coin (talentum) of a living substance descend into his
breast. “Heavier than gold, sweeter than honey,” it shook him from his sleep.
21. Timothy David Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971), 70–84, 130–42; see also Karen L. King, “Prophetic Power and Women’s Author-
ity: The Case of the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene),” in Women Preachers and Prophets through
Two Millennia of Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 21–41. King reports the research of William
Tabarnee, The Social Identity of the Montanists: The Epigraphic Data (Macon, GA: Mercer
Press, forthcoming) on 34; see too Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (London: Penguin,
1967), 52. See Tertullian, Adversus Praxean 1.5, ed. E. Kroymann and E. Evans, CCSL 2
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 1159, and Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V, 14–19, ed. Kirsopp
Lake (London: Heinemann, 1926), 1: 471–95.
22. John H. van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1983), especially 91–4, 275–82; see also Mariano Margrassi, Teologia e Storia nel pensiero
di Ruperto di Deutz (Rome: Pontificiam Universitatem Urbanianum de Propagande Fide, 1959).
23. De glorificatione Trinitatis et processione S. Spiritus 1.2, PL 169.15B–17C; In Apocalypsim
Joannis Apostoli, Prologus, PL 169.825–28.
24. Rupert discusses John’s initial vision of the Son of Man and the subsequent visions to the
Churches in In Apocalypsim 1, 2, PL 169.852C–864B and 870B–904A.
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50 journal of religious history
At first it stayed still, then it moved around within him. Rupert describes it as
“a living thing and true life” (res viva et vera vita), always going around in
circles greater than the one before until it became like a great river filling his
heart and soul.25 That Rupert is talking about himself is evident from his
fuller account of this experience in his commentary on Matthew.26 A fierce
critic of the abuse of power by secular authorities, Rupert perceived the Holy
Spirit as resting not just on reformed monastic communities, but on indi-
vidual women and men.27 Such idealistic confidence recalls that of rigorist
followers of Montanus in the early Church who believed that the Holy Spirit
was continuing to speak through prophecy.
Rupert saw himself not as a visionary, but as an exegete who derived his
authority from his capacity to interpret the whole of Scripture.28 Hildegard by
contrast insisted that she had no competence to engage in line by line com-
mentary on the sacred text. Her interest was in the “marrow” (medulla) of
Scripture. While she experienced pain in the marrow of her bones, she drew
inspiration and life from the marrow of the sacred text. Her understanding of
its meaning was shaped by those visionary prophecies with which she identi-
fied. Her emphasis in Scivias is on the call to iustitia or moral righteousness
from which all virtues derive. In its opening vision, she explains that all the
virtues come from God, and they are sought by the poor in spirit. The third
book of Scivias, about the role of the Virtues in building up the heavenly
kingdom, tends not to attract as much attention as the earlier sections, but is
integral to her re-imagining of apocalyptic tradition. It begins with her vision
of the fall of a great star, “splendid and beautiful,” from the brightness of
divinity into dark cinders. Hildegard sees history as a search to recover the
unity of paradise. God has kept his splendour for humanity so that it canreturn
to its divine source. Her subsequent visions in this third book all explore this
process of restoration, imagined as the building of a heavenly city.
Hildegard describes the Virtues in detail to reinforce her sense of the
fundamentally ethical character of the true ecclesia. She presents them with
great attention to the detail of what they wear, forcing the reader to engage in
an act of creative imagination. The first figure she describes is Celestial Love:
for this love must exist in people before anything else. She wears on her head a
bishop’s mitre and has loose white hair; for this virtue was crowned in the High
Priest Jesus Christ, but also in the high priests of the Old Testament and in those
who called to the Son of God, “Would that You would rend the heavens and come
down.”29
25. De glorificatione Trinitatis et processione Spiritus Sancti 2.8, PL 169.48C–49D.
26. De glorificatione Trinitatis 2.13–17, 3.9–12, PL 169.44–8, 60, 62; Rupert describes his
own visions in De gloria et honore Filii hominis super Matthaeum 12, ed. R. Haacke, CCCM 26,
111 and CCCM 29, 366–86. For further discussion, see Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 49–52,
277, 349–51, 363.
27. Van Engen, 287.
28. Barbara Newman, “Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation,” Church History 54
(1985): 163–75; Kerby-Fulton, “Prophet and Reformer,” 76–9.
29. Scivias 3.3.5: “quia ipse prae omni cura inesse debet hominibus; gestans in capite suo
pontificalem infulam, sparsis capillis et albis: quia ualde coronata est in summo sacerdote Iesu
Christo, et in summis sacerdotibus ueteris testamenti et in illis qui eidem Filio Dei dixerunt:
‘Vtinam dirumperes caelos et descenderes’.”
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hildegard’s apocalyptic imagination 51
By presenting a woman as carrying a mitre over loose white hair, Hildegard
creates an image that might seem blasphemous if she did not explain that this
imagined woman is reminding priests that their role is to embody Celestial
Love. Another Virtue is Discipline, dressed in a purple garment “in the ex-
ample of my Son, who was born of the Virgin in charity and gave it every
means of working.”30 In the central section of Scivias she had laid out a quite
orthodox vision of the established ecclesiastical order. In this third section
she uses a female image dressed in episcopal garb to present her image of the
true ecclesia.
Talking about the Virtues enables Hildegard to intersperse her comment-
ary with discussion of the negative forces which hinder growth. In Scivias
Hildegard identifies such behaviour as iniustitia, without making more than
general complaints against those who assault the Church and its privileges.
The Virtues expose such behaviour by the sheer brilliance of their form. One
of the most dramatic of her descriptions is that of Discretion. She requires the
reader to imagine an extraordinary scene:
She was dressed in a tunic of many different colours. And I saw that she took off
the tunic and her shoes, and stood naked, and suddenly her hair and her face
gleamed newly white, like a newborn baby, and her whole body shone like light.
And then I saw on her breast a splendid cross with the image of Christ Jesus; it was
depicted above a little bush with two flowers on it, a lily and a rose, which reached
upward toward the cross. And I saw her vigorously beat the tunic and shoes she had
taken off, so that a great deal of dust flew out of them.31
Hildegard’s originality lies in the freshness of her imagery. As she explains
subsequently, the Lily (emblem of virginity) represents the Old Testament,
the Rose (emblem of Christ), the New Testament. Hildegard’s imagined scene
of Discretion shaking out ecclesiastical dust provides a vivid metaphor of her
desire for reform in the Church.
Hildegard does not challenge the social order in Scivias. As Flanagan has
emphasized, she insists on obedience to the authorities when they are there
to transmit the will of God.32 Hildegard’s argument, however, is about the
necessity for right relationships between ruler and ruled: “for between the
lesser power of the secular government and the servitude of its subjects there
must be thoughtful justice, and the two must touch each other with the hands
of their joint labour in the single minded and simple devotion of childlike
innocence.”33 Passages like these remind us that, although she accepts ideals
30. Scivias 3.3.6.
31. Scivias 3.6.7: “Induta quoque erat uaria tunica plurimo colore intexta. Et uidi quod eandem
tunicam et calceamenta sua exuit, stans nuda. Et subito crines ac facies eius resplenderunt in
pulchritudinem albedinis et nouitatis ut iam nati infantis, atque per totum corpus suum effulsit ut
purus et lucidus splendor elucet in claritate. Tunc etiam uidi in pectores eius splendidissimam
crucem cum imagine Christi Iesu super arbusculam inter duos flores lillii et rosae stantem
positam, qui se sursum ad eandem crucem aliquantulum recuruabant. Vidique quod exutam
tunicam atque calceamenta sua fortiter excutiebat, ita quod puluis multus ab eis excuteretur.”
32. Scivias 3.6.11–14; see note 7 above.
33. Scivias 3.6.24: “quia est etiam inter inferiorem potestatem saecularis regiminis et inter
subiectionem saecularis ministrationis extensio iustae considerationis, ita ut hae unanimi et
simpliciter deuotione puerilis innocentiae se inuicem tangant in manu coniunctae operationis
suae.” See note 1 above.
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52 journal of religious history
of political hierarchy, she was aware of the dangers inherent in abuse of
power.
Hildegard avoids making precise complaints about individuals or about
specific events in history. In vision eleven of the third book, she presents an
apocalyptic image of five animals: a fiery dog, a yellow lion, a pale horse, a
black pig, and a grey wolf, explaining them very briefly as “the five ferocious
epochs of temporal rule” (quinque ferocissimi cursus temporalium regnorum).34
She is not specific about whether these refer to particular times in history or
just types of behaviour which she sees as destructive of the kingdom of God.
The dog is the time of people who seem fiery, but do not burn with the
iustitia of God; the lion represents those who fight, the pale horse (an image
of death in Rev. 6:8) those who indulge in swift-moving pleasures, the pig
those who wallow in impurity, the wolf those who plunder each other as well
as the powerful and the fortunate. The figure of ecclesia is represented by a
woman dressed as the bride of Christ in her upper torso, but defiled from
below the waist.35 This is her allusive way of lamenting corruption within the
Church. Her account of the Antichrist, influenced by Adso’s widelycirculated
De ortu et tempore Antichristi, makes no effort to say whether the Antichrist
is about to appear.36 She believes that the world is now in a seventh epoch,
rather than the sixth age, as was conventional in patristic exegesis.37 Her
version of the apocalypse in Scivias is not about the direction of history, but
about the work of the Virtues in building up the heavenly city.
Hildegard concludes Scivias with a dramatized version of her argument.
After providing sequences in honour of Mary and the saints, she presents a
condensed version of the Ordo Virtutum, a drama in which a Soul originally
is lured away from her religious calling by the Devil, but eventually learns
to acknowledge the help of the various different Virtues. The music of the
heavens awakens the soul to life. As throughout Scivias, she relates thistheme
of spiritual awakening to comment on the relationship between body and
soul; just as the word denotes the body and the humanity of the Son of God,
so music denotes the soul and divinity.38 Unity is thus restored in Christ.
That Hildegard actually had her nuns act out the roles of the Virtues is
implied by the letter of complaint which Tenxwind, magistra of the Augus-
tinian nuns at Andernach, wrote to Hildegard c. 1150, about certain practices
pursued at Rupertsberg which she found most uncalled for. Tenxwind was
shocked that on feast days nuns were standing in church wearing silk gar-
ments touching the floor, wore jewels and had their hair flowing loose rather
than bound with a veil. She related these extravagances to Hildegard’s policy
of only accepting noble women like herself into her new community at
34. Scivias 3.11.1–6.
35. Scivias 3.11.13.
36. Scivias 3.11.25–37; cf. Adso Dervensis, De ortu et tempore Antichristi CCCM 45 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1976), 23–7.
37. Scivias 3.11.23. While the editors note parallels here to Rupert, De sancta Trinitate in Gen.
3:36, CCCM 21, 279–80, Rupert does not claim that the world is now in the seventh age, the
time of eternal repose.
38. Scivias 3.13.12.
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hildegard’s apocalyptic imagination 53
Rupertsberg. Hildegard’s answer to Tenxwind includes a ringing defence of
why Pauline strictures about the need for women to dress modestly do not
apply to virgins:
But these strictures do not apply to a virgin, for she stands in the unsullied purity of
paradise, lovely and unwithering, and she always remains in the full viridity of the
budding rod. A virgin is not commanded to cover up her hair, but she willingly
does so out of her great humility for a person will naturally hide the beauty of her
soul, lest, on account of her pride, a hawk [i.e., avaricious person] carry it off.39
Hildegard has her nuns dress up as the Virtues to dramatize her vision of how
humanity should behave.
When Hildegard moved with her nuns to the new community at Rupertsberg
c. 1150, a new phase in her intellectual development begins. Having obtained
ecclesiastical approval, she turned her attention away from ecclesia to reflec-
tion on the natural world, as well as to writing her Symphony of Celestial
Harmonies and the Book of Life’s Merits.40 As Kerby-Fulton has argued, her
growing involvement in ecclesiastical affairs made her more outspoken in her
criticism of abuses within the Church. The last major project of her life,
conceived between 1163 and 1174, was the Book of Divine Works. LikeScivias,
this massive composition opens with creation and concludes with ultimate
judgment and a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem. She is not interested, how-
ever, in explaining the significance of particular roles within the Church.
Rather, she seeks to synthesize her understanding of creation as a whole, and
of the human person in particular. She is also much more expert in interleav-
ing explanation of her visions with commentary on scriptural texts important
to her. In its first part, she begins with a vision of the Son of Man, but then
explores the human body and its relationship to the natural world so as to
lead into her explanation of the beginning of John’s Gospel about the Word
made flesh as the paradigm of the fusion of body and soul (1.4.105). Thesecond
part (2.1 in the new critical edition; vision five in older versions) comprises
only one vision, that of an orb, part in darkness, part in light. This allows her
to comment on the spiritual meaning of the opening verses of Genesis about
creation. In the five visions of its third part (six to ten), she explores thespiritual
significance of creation through the image of the heavenly city. There is
greater continuity than in Scivias between the realm of the physical and the
spiritual. Her visions of the Virtues are less cluttered, as she gives particular
emphasis to three: charity, humility, and peace (3.3). In her final vision, she
focuses on Charity, “who shines like the sun, with a purple robe and wearsaround
her neck precious stones” while gazing in a mirror. Charity provides the
standard by which humanity can gaze at itself and realize its own limitations.
39. Epist. 52r, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91, 129.
40. Laurence Moulinier discusses the complex evolution and subdivision of what may have
been an original “book of the subtleties of created things” in Le manuscrit perdu à Strasbourg.
Enquête sur l’oeuvre scientifique de Hildegarde (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995).
English translations are based on texts which may incorporate interpolated passages, such as that
by Priscilla Throop, Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her
Classic Work on Health and Healing (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1998).
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