About Me

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I am a medievalist and an adjunct college instructor in the humanities at Union College. My research includes medieval theologies of history, text/image relationships in visionary and mystical texts, and the writings of the twelfth-century Doctor of the Church, St. Hildegard of Bingen. I am also a translator of medieval Latin and German texts, especially as relate to my research. My translation of Hildegard's Book of Divine Works is available from Catholic University of America Press here. I completed a Master's in Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame in 2010, a Fulbright Fellowship in Germany in 2008, and a B.A. in Classics and German at Boston College in 2007.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

O tu illustrata (Symphonia 23)

For the Feast of the Annunciation, an Antiphon for the Virgin
by St. Hildegard of Bingen[1]


Chastity, from
Scivias III.8: The Pillar
of the Savior's Humanity.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 178r.
O tu illustrata
de divina claritate,
clara Virgo Maria,
Verbo Dei infusa,
unde venter tuus floruit
de introitu Spiritus Dei,
qui in te sufflavit
et in te exsuxit
quod Eva abstulit
in abscisione puritatis,
per contractam contagionem       
de suggestione diaboli.
Illumined by
God’s clearest brightness,
O Virgin Mary bright,
and flooded with the Word of God:
your womb then flourished at
the entrance of God’s Spirit—
he breathed within you,
within drew out
the loss of Eve,
a purity cut off and silenced
by that disease contracted
at the Devil’s sly persuasion.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

O vos imitatores (Symphonia 39)

For the Feast of Pope St. Gregory the Great, a Responsory for Confessors
by St. Hildegard of Bingen [1]


Scivias II.6: Eucharist.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 86v.
V. O vos imitatores
     excelse persone
in preciosissima
et gloriosissima significatione,     
o quam magnus est
     vester ornatus,
ubi homo procedit,
solvens et stringens in Deo
pigros et peregrinos,

R. etiam ornans
     candidos et nigros
et magna onera
remittens.
V. O actors, you who play
     the Highest Role
within that precious drama,
that glorious sacrament!
How great and beautiful
     your vested costume,
as steps forth such a man
to loose and bind in God
the slacker and sojourner,

R. the shining and the squalid
     both to beautify
and all their heavy burdens
to remit.

Friday, March 07, 2014

Vos flores rosarum (Symphonia 38)

For the Feast of Sts. Perpetua and Felicity, a Responsory for Martyrs
by St. Hildegard of Bingen[1]


Agony in the Garden.
Drawing from the Abbey of
St. Walburg, Eichstätt, ca. 1500.
(From J. Hamburger,
Nuns as Artists, plate 8)
V. Vos flores rosarum,
qui in effusione sanguinis vestri  
beati estis in maximis gaudiis,
redolentibus et sudantibus
in emptione
que fluxit de interiori mente
consilii manentis ante evum

R. in illo,
in quo non erat constitutio
a capite.

V. Sit honor in consortio vestro,  
qui estis instrumentum ecclesie
et qui in vulneribus
vestri sanguinis undatis:

R. In illo,
in quo non erat constitutio
a capite.
V. You blooms of roses,
within your blood outpoured
you’re blessed in joys supreme—
the fragrance and distilled perfume
of that redemption
that flowed from th’ inmost heart
of counsel kept before all time

R. in him
who was unfounded
at the start.

V. An honor in your fellowship!
The Church’s instrument you are
as in your wounds, your waves
of blood, you surge and gush:

R. in him
who was unfounded
at the start.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Cum erubuerint infelices (Symphonia 14)

For Ash Wednesday, an Antiphon for the Virgin by St. Hildegard of Bingen[1]

Scivias I.2: The Fall.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 4r.
Cum erubuerint infelices
in progenie sua,
procedentes in peregrinatione       
     casus,
tunc tu clamas clara voce,
hoc modo homines elevans
de isto malicioso
casu.
While downcast parents blushed,
ashamed to see their offspring
wand’ring off into the fallen exile’s
     pilgrimage,
you cry aloud with crystal voice,
to lift up humankind
from that malicious
fall.

Cum erubuerint by Sequentia on Grooveshark