An Act of Cowardice

An Open Letter to Every Senator who Voted Against Background Checks:

I write to you with a heart aggrieved by your shameful decision this week to vote against the implementation of universal background checks for firearms’ transactions. This was a bill designed to close loopholes exploited by criminals and the mentally ill to purchase firearms to which they have no legal right at gun shows and over the Internet. It was also a bill that, contrary to the claims made falsely against it, did not infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of American citizens; indeed, little more than a decade ago, its provisions were openly supported by the National Rifle Association. It was a bill with overwhelming popular support (not to mention the support of a majority of your fellow senators), which you callously ignored because you were cowed and frightened by the shameless voices of mendacious bullies. This week, you perverted democracy.

O eterne Deus (Symphonia 7)

An Antiphon for God the Father by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Theophany of Caritas
(Divine Love)
Liber Divinorum Operum
I.1 (Lucca MS 1942)

O eterne Deus, nunc tibi placeat ut in amore illo ardeas ut membra illa simus que fecisti in eodem amore, cum Filium tuum genuisti in prima aurora ante omnem creaturam, et inspice necessitatem hanc que super nos cadit, et abstrahe eam a nobis propter Filium tuum, et perduc nos in leticiam salutis.

O eternal God, may you be pleased to blaze once more in love and to reforge us as the limbs you fashioned in that love, when first you bore your Son upon the primal dawn before all things created. Look upon this need that over us has fallen, draw it off from us according to your Son, and lead us back into salvation’s    wholesome happiness.

O magne Pater (Symphonia 6)

An Antiphon for God the Father by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Scivias III.12:
The New Heaven & New Earth.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 225v.

O magne Pater, in magna necessitate sumus.      Nunc igitur obsecramus, obsecramus te per Verbum tuum, per quod nos constituisti      plenos quibus indigemus. Nunc placeat tibi, Pater, quia te decet, ut aspicias in nos per adiutorium tuum, ut non deficiamus, et ne nomen tuum      in nobis obscuretur, et per ipsum nomen tuum    dignare nos adiuvare.

O Father great, in great necessity and need we are. Thus we now beg, we beg of you according to your Word, through whom you once      established us full of all that we now lack. Now may it please you, Father, for it behooves you, to look upon us with your kindly aid, lest we should fail again and, lost, forget      your name. By that your name we pray— please kindly help and bring us aid!

O pastor animarum (Symphonia 4)

An Antiphon for the Redeemer by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Scivias II.1:
The Redeemer (detail).
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 41v.

O pastor animarum et o prima vox per quam omnes creati sumus,     nunc tibi, tibi placeat ut digneris nos liberare de miseriis et languoribus nostris.

O shepherd of our souls, O primal voice, whose call created all of us: Now hear our cry to thee, to thee, and deign to free us from our miseries and feebleness.

O quam mirabilis (Symphonia 3)

An Antiphon for the Creator by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Humanity as Microcosm.
Liber Divinorum Operum I.2
(Lucca MS 1942)

O quam mirabilis est prescientia divini pectoris que prescivit omnem      creaturam. Nam cum Deus inspexit faciem hominis quem formavit,   omnia opera sua in eadem forma hominis integra aspexit. O quam mirabilis est inspiratio que hominem sic suscitavit.

How wonderful it is, that the foreknowing heart divine has first known everything      created! For when God looked upon the human face that he had formed, he gazed upon      his ev’ry work and deed, reflected pure in that humanity. How wondrous is that breath with which he inspires humanity,     rousing us to life!

O virtus Sapientie (Symphonia 2)

An Antiphon for Divine Wisdom by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Scivias III.5: The Zeal
or Jealousy of God.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 153r.

O virtus Sapientie, que circuiens circuisti, comprehendendo omnia in una via que habet vitam, tres alas habens, quarum una in altum volat   et altera de terra sudat et tercia undique volat. Laus tibi sit, sicut te decet, O Sapientia.

O Wisdom’s energy! Whirling, you encircle and everything embrace in the single way of life. Three wings you have: one soars above into the heights, one sweeps about the earth, and with the third you fly      throughout. Praise be to you, as is your due, O Wisdom.

O vis eternitatis (Symphonia 1)

For Easter, a Responsory for the Creator by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Scivias II.1: Creation,
Fall, & Redemption.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 41v.

V. O vis eternitatis que omnia ordinasti in      corde tuo, per Verbum tuum omnia      creata sunt sicut voluisti, et ipsum Verbum tuum induit carnem in formatione illa que educta est de Adam. R. Et sic indumenta ipsius       a maximo dolore abstersa sunt.

V. O strength within Eternity: All things you held in order      in your heart, and through your Word were      all created according to your will. And then your very Word was clothed within that form of flesh from Adam born. R. And so his garments were washed and cleansed from greatest suffering.

O cruor sanguinis (Symphonia 5)

A Good Friday Antiphon by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Scivias II.6: Christ's
Sacrifice and the Church.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 86r.

O cruor sanguinis qui in alto sonuisti, cum omnia elementa se implicuerunt in lamentabilem vocem cum tremore, quia sanguis Creatoris sui    illa tetigit, ungue nos de languoribus nostris.

O streaming blood, to heaven’s height you cried, when every element enwrapped itself within a voice of woe with trembling misery, for their Creator’s blood had covered them: Anoint us and heal our feebleness.

Doctor Ecclesiae: A Chronogram in Honor of St. Hildegard of Bingen

Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen.
From the Rupertsberg Scivias, fol. 1r.

o hILDegarDIs prophetIssa
DoCtor eCCLesIae:
Vera VIsIo XrIstI
sIt nobIs LVX opVsqVe
In VIa.

(O Hildegardis prophetissa, Doctor Ecclesiae: Vera visio Xristi sit nobis lux opusque in via.)

(O Hildegard, prophetess and Doctor of the Church: May the true vision of Christ be for us light and task upon the way.)

St. Hildegard of Bingen made Doctor of the Church: Coverage Round-Up

Here's a round-up of the various coverage--news, commentary, arts, and tributes--of Pope Benedict XVI's declaration St. Hildegard of Bingen as a Doctor of the Church on Sunday, October 7.  I have also corralled at the bottom all of the audiences, speeches, etc. in which Pope Benedict has made major mention of St. Hildegard.

News Reports:

• Apostolic Letter Proclaiming St. Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Universal Church (Pope Benedict XVI, 10-7-2012)
• Pope opens Synod: The Church exists to evangelize (Vatican Radio, 10-7-2012)
• Pope Benedict creates two new Doctors of the Church (Catholic News Agency, 10-7-2012)
• Pope launches drive to reclaim lapsed Western Catholics (Reuters, 10-7-2012)
• Pope names 2 church doctors at start of synod on re-spreading faith to areas where it’s fallen (AP, as printed by The Washington Post, 10-7-2012)
• St. Hildegard of Bingen and St. John of Avila are now Doctors of the Church (Rome Reports [Video], 10-7-2012)

Caritas, Humilitas, and Pax: Theophany of the Fountain in St. Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Divinorum Operum III.3

Liber Divinorum Operum III.3:
Theophany of Caritas, Humilitas,
& Pax in the fountain.
(From the Lucca MS)

As we celebrate this weekend St. Hildegard of Bingen’s declaration as a Doctor of the Church, we should reflect on how Hildegard understood her theological vocation to be rooted in the self-revelatory relationship between God and Creation.  I have chosen to translate below one of the visions from Hildegard’s last and greatest work, the Liber Divinorum Operum (Book of Divine Works), in which she offers just such a meditation.  In this work, Hildegard returns to the history of salvation that formed the structure of her first work, Scivias—but this time, prompted by an extraordinary experience of the divine in the early 1160’s, she envisions and explores it through the dynamic relationship between human and divine.

Doctor Viriditatis? St. Hildegard of Bingen’s Doctor of the Church Name

Hildegard of Bingen's portrait.
Rupertsberg Scivias (facs.), fol. 1r.

In commemoration of the Feast of St. Hildegard of Bingen, who died on this day (September 17) in 1179, and in consideration of Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming declaration of her as the thirty-fifth Doctor of the Church, one thing we might wonder about is what her doctoral “nickname” will be.  While not all Doctors of the Church have such monikers, many—especially the medieval and early modern thinkers—are lovingly referred to by these unofficial titles.  For example, the thirteenth-century mendicant-scholastics St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure are known as the Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor) and Doctor Seraphicus (Seraphic Doctor), respectively.

The Pope and the Prophetess: Benedict XVI, Hildegard of Bingen, and the Reform of the Church (Part 2)

Liber Divinorum Operum III.5,
from the Lucca MS.

Update: A much expanded and revised version of this essay appeared in 2019 in the journal postmedieval, accessible online here.

Part 1 of this post can be found here.

There are two aspects of Joseph Ratzinger’s reformist vision of the Church that find particularly striking parallels in Hildegard of Bingen’s thought: the political relationship between Church and Empire (or secular world), and the renewal of the Church as a purified but dramatically reduced institution.  Although Hildegard’s own reformist thought must be situated within the legacy of the Gregorian reform of the eleventh century, what is most striking are the ways in which she departs—sometimes radically—from a Hildebrandian vision of the Church; and in those departures, Ratzinger follows her, as much as that might be to the chagrin of traditionalists today.

The Pope and the Prophetess: Benedict XVI, Hildegard of Bingen, and the Reform of the Church (Part 1)

Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen.
From the Rupertsberg Scivias, fol. 1r.

Update: A much expanded and revised version of this essay appeared in 2019 in the journal postmedieval, accessible online here.

Today, Pope Benedict XVI formally authorized the liturgical commemoration of St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and inscribed her name in the catalogue of the saints—effectively concluding the cause for her canonization started 800 years ago.  Later this year he will declare her a Doctor of the Church—an extraordinary honor for a woman whose name was practically unknown (at least in Anglo-American circles) until the latter part of the twentieth century.  Yet, her meteoric rise to superstardom in these last few decades—propelled, first by her music, and then by her talents in other areas of art, natural medicine, feminism, and mysticism—is really only a rebirth.  For most of the centuries between her death in 1179 and the latter twentieth century, Hildegard was known primarily as a visionary prophet of the end times.

In die cinerum: Ash Wednesday Remembrances

The following is a recollection of Ash Wednesday, 2006 (March 1), which I spent in a visit to the Abbey of St. Hildegard of Bingen, in Eibingen, Germany. It was a day that helped change the course of my life.

It was cold, very cold on that Ash Wednesday morning, as I saw the first darts of dawn sparkle on the Rhein’s waters and light the road up the hill to the Abbey of St. Hildegard of Bingen. The bare branches of the grape vines on the slope were dusted with the previous night’s snow, undisturbed by the revelry in Rüdesheim, the town below—the Germans call it Fasching, the French, Mardi Gras. I reveled in neither, for it had been early to bed Tuesday night, early to rise Wednesday morning, that I might catch the trains from Mainz to Rüdesheim in time for the morning service.

Vergil’s Messiah: The Pedagogical Use of Medieval Interpretations of Classical Texts

Vergil and the Sybil receive
a vision of the Nativity of Christ.
From a 14th-cen. chronicle.

This week in the Humanities survey I am teaching this semester, we examined the imperial ideologies developed around Octavian (Augustus) in the last decades before the birth of Christ (or dawn of the Common Era).  I had my freshmen read selections from Books VI and VIII of Vergil’s Aeneid and, more important, Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue.  Written about the year 40 B.C. in the wake of Octavian and Antony’s victory over Caesar’s assassins at Philippi, but before the two Triumvirs descended once more into civil war, the poem expresses Vergil’s hopes for a coming age of restored peace to the Roman world.  As we read through the poem in class, I encouraged the students to think about what the text’s prophetic words might remind them of; and after a few ponderous minutes, one student in each section managed to mutter some form of the name of Christ.

Hildegard of Bingen to be named Doctor of the Church

Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 1r.

Update: On May 10, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI formalized Hildegard of Bingen's saintly status in a process known as equivalent canonization, by which the Pontiff authorized the universal church to observe the veneration of a holy person (“Servant of God”) according to the rites of full canonization by inscription in the universal calendar of saints. Hildegard’s veneration within the dioceses of Germany was approved by what is now the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in 1940, although her name appeared in the Roman Martyrologium beginning in the sixteenth century, and indulgences for local veneration in the Rhineland can be found throughout the later Middle Ages. Her feast day is September 17 (the date of her death in 1179). On May 27, in his Regina Caeli address for the Solemnity of Pentecost, Benedict announced that on October 7, 2012, Hildegard and St. John of Avila will join the thirty-three other Doctors of the Church, thirty men and three women.

The “Nostradamus” Effect: Prophecy and Its Discontents

Hildegard of Bingen, Illumination for
Scivias III.5 in the Rupertsberg MS.

The parched sands of the Middle East are dampened only by blood spilt in the ravages of war; the powerful and rich, their hearts enflamed by greed, drive their thirst ever harder with guiltless rapine; the Church, our Holy Virgin Mother, is raped and defiled by the lusts of her ministers.  Corruption among men, even those supposed holy; floods and famine, quakes and drought, a natural world rent by disaster.  These are times of crisis; but are they times of despair?

Can Faith and Science Coexist?

"Galileo before the Holy Office"
by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury.
Image from WikiMedia.

Are the claims of modern science and of the Christian faith compatible?  Can a practicing and faithful Christian trust the evidence gathered and digested by biologists and chemists and physicists today?  Or does a narrowly-defined reading of the Book of Genesis demand that any whose allegiance is with God dismiss the conclusions of rational thought?

This day is call’d the feast of Crispian

Image from WikiCommons.

Today is indeed (or at least was, in the old calendar)^[1] the feast of Saints Crispin and Crispinian.  According to legend, they were on this day in A.D. 286 or 287 martyred under Diocletian and his co-emperor, Maximianus near Soissons in modern-day France.  But this day in the English-speaking world shall always “be in our flowing cups freshly remember’d,” for on Crispin Crispinian in 1415, King Henry V defeated the French at Agincourt and ushered in a brief renewal of his crown’s hold upon France.

Verbum de Verbo: On Translation and its Act of Faith

Image from the Codex Sinaiticus.

Why translate again a work so often done already?  Is there anything new to be gained by publishing another ream of Iliads, Homer’s epic whose number of translations (and transmutations) might come second only to the Bible?  When The Economist’s recent review posed this question, it offered an oblique but important answer.

Book Review: Inventing the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor

Norman F. Cantor. Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century. New York: Morrow, 1991. 477 pp.

This is a moving, if idiosyncratic, historiographical meditation on the rise of "modern" medieval studies (to be distinguished from those of the nineteenth century). After a concise sketch of the broad strokes of medieval history and the movements of modern interpretation, Cantor dives into compelling portraits of the twenty medievalists who, in his opinion, "invented" the Middle Ages for the modern world of the twentieth century. Combining a standard academic's review of their works with an esteemed historian's synthetic stitching to tell the history of historians, Cantor attempts to understand not only what each of these men (and one woman) told us about the Middle Ages but also why they approached them the way they did.

Curiosity in and out of the Classroom, Intellectual and Otherwise

James Lang has a penetrating article over at The Chronicle of Higher Education this week exploring contemporary student culture outside of the classroom.  Beginning, as many of us do, with fond memories of those late-night discussions of the grand meaning of it all when we were undergraduates--and how naively ambitious those discussions were!--he takes stock of where those discussions might be found today.  It can be a depressing, if not altogether surprising, conclusion:

(...) most students do not have a curious and thriving intellectual life outside of their courses. The late-night discussions that I imagined my students having in their dorm rooms about the meaning of life, according to Small, are simply not happening.

Sunrise, Sunset

Though today is overcast and cool, yesterday was one of those perfect examples of autumn: a warm, partly-cloudy day that opened and closed crisply with numinous light.  This is sunrise from a hillock at the southern tip of the University of the Cumberlands campus:

The Secrets of Medieval Cathedrals...

…aren’t really all that secret. But if you’re an overzealous editor at NOVA, you might be tempted to invoke “secretly encoded” information in sacred architecture to drum up popular interest. When PBS last week reaired the series’ 2010 opener, “Building the Great Cathedrals”, it was apparent that even their high standards could sometimes be duped by that popular myth that codes, DaVinci or otherwise, are hidden all about those mysterious Middle Ages, just waiting for modern sleuths to expose the hidden past.

In novum statum: The Next Stage of Our Lives

With the slight embarrassment that I am so tardy in sharing this news, I am nevertheless pleased to announce that my wife, Heather, and I have embarked on the next stage of our lives.  Over the summer, Heather accepted a tenure-track position in the Biology Department at the University of the Cumberlands.  At the beginning of August, we packed a great U-Haul and made the eight-hour trek to settle into our new home: Williamsburg, Kentucky.  Nestled in the western foothills of the Appalachian mountains and a bare eleven miles north of the Tennessee border, it has certainly marked a change of scenery from South Bend.

In Principio Novo: This Blog Returns to Life

For several years now this blog has lain dormant.  Originally conceived as a catch-all for what I fancied were my more important thoughts as I began my senior year of college, it served its better times as a repository for my budding efforts as a medievalist and translator and as a travelogue of sorts during my year in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar.  During my time as a graduate student at the Medieval Institute it went fallow, except for scattered personal announcements and to post a rough paper or two.  Certainly the demands of graduate work and falling in love kept me from it; but far more, I think, did I forebear under the realization of my own incompetencies.  My graduate committee broke the pride of intellect; to my wife I willingly sacrificed the pride of soul.

It might seem presumptuous, then, that I should now attempt its revival.  It is my certain hope (how vain is yet to be seen) that I can offer something worth while.  When I recognize and shake my head at the naïve arrogance I once put on display, I hope that some more years along have left me a clearer, more experienced lens.  Wise it may not be, but at least a bit more prudent.

The drive to put down in writing the whirlwind of thoughts and experiences, both quotidian and extraordinary, is as strong as ever.  One good idea might occasionally escape in that process by which the build-up of voice upon voice escalates until finally, from sheer dint of pressure, it is flung from the chaotic nebula of my head into the galaxy of the world outside.  But as Chaucer noticed when he glimpsed this “Domus Dedaly / That Laboryntus cleped ys” (House of Fame, 1920-1), not even in these nascent moments of a story is truth purely found.  The muddied waters of human expression are from their very source a mixture of truth and falsehood.  I cannot promise pure clarity, but only that in the process, the journey might be a little less murky than before.

Epistemological theorizing aside (for the moment), what concrete shape will this blog take?  I can refer you to its very first post years ago, for the motivations remain much the same.  As its title would indicate, it will reflect the experiences of a man of faith seeking to understand that faith and the world in which he exercises it.  I will strive to understand the grand ideas that animate the course of human history, tempered by the practical limitations we face every day in living out those grand claims we make in our more idealistic moments.

I am an academic; and the methods by which I explore this journey we call “life” will be, by and large, academic.  I will read monographs and review them; scour the medieval religious texts I study for clues; and attempt to reconstruct the thoughts and experiences of men and women who lived centuries ago.  Some of this work may hopefully find its way into print; at the very least, I hope to make more medieval texts available in English translation.  As a teacher, my goal is to help new generations explore and understand the human story, whose conflicts and crises today echo anxieties faced by countless generations before.  At my best moments, I hope to bring these fascinating figures back to life; most of the time, I will consider it a success to have told a coherent tale.

But I must also be on guard lest I succumb to that danger that lurks in the path of any academic: the danger of becoming too ensconced in our Ivory Towers, reducing, as it were, the true complexity of the figures we study to the merely academic and scholarly.  As I was reminded a few years ago in a visit to the Abbey of St. Hildegard of Bingen, the real rewards of our work should take us beyond the conferences and scholarly monographs and journals.  I met there, for example, an Italian-German woman whom we “scholars” would term an “amateur”, that is, whose interest in Hildegard is entirely practical.  She studies Hildegard, spends time at Hildegard’s abbey, and reads Hildegard’s works, not because that’s her job, but because she finds meaning for her own life in Hildegard’s.  Hildegard’s writings on natural medicine are not merely important as documents in the history of science; for her, they become actual tools in regulating the ailments of her own body.  Likewise, Hildegard’s theology is not merely a collection of theoretical notions; rather, this woman has actually allowed her own spiritual life to be taught by Hildegard’s teachings.

The vitality of Hildegard’s personality in our age is the product not of our scholarly researches but of actual people and their real encounters with an extraordinary woman of an age gone by.  It is thus for us, the academics, not merely to write our books and give our lectures for the sake of other academics, but to realize that our profession, like all human activities, is meant to be for the advancement of humanity—and that such advancement is not merely an abstract goal of progress, but the concrete reality of people who live their lives in the here and now, perhaps weighed down by the weariness of day-to-day drudgery, yet also lifted up by the simple joys of day-to-day life, well-lived.

In Memoriam

Gloria Byrd Ristow
(May 15, 1938-August 1, 2009)

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
—I Corinthians 15:26

My grandmother faced many enemies in her life, and overcame each one. The most notable was the battle she fought so long against her own body, against Schleroderma, an enemy that took from her some of her fingers; that took from her the healthy breath of her lungs; that ultimately took from her her life. Yet she fought with all the weapons she had. The physical ones we humorously referred to as “puff, pump, and circumstance.”

We’re Engaged!

I am very happy to announce that I and my girlfriend, Heather Eisler, are engaged. We were visiting my family in Colorado last weekend for my brother’s high school graduation, and on Sunday morning during the announcements at my home parish of St. Mary’s, I proposed and she accepted.

Divine Love as both Creative and Rational: The Theophany of Caritas in Hildegard of Bingen's Liber Divinorum Operum

“Love” today is often primarily understood to signify a passionate, sensual, or even creative feeling; when we think upon it further, we may discover deeper levels of connotation, but they still fall distinctly into the emotional, affective range—what we might call a “right-brained” conception of love rooted in the heart. This is the love that we often see at the center of human interaction, that indescribable and powerful connection that binds one human being to another—the love of neighbor enjoined in the Gospel. As Christians, we see the pinnacle of this Love expressed in the passion and death of Jesus on the Cross—an outpouring of Love in the most anguished moments of human pain and suffering, the humanity of Jesus in its sharpest and most brutal detail. On the other hand, we have the “first and great commandment” to love God with every fiber of our being—agape in Greek, caritas in Latin, from whence derives the English word “charity”. This is that Love that John identifies with God (1 John 4:16), whose pinnacle we also find in Jesus the Son of God, His Logos or Word. This is rational, intellectual Love—what we might call “left-brained” love rooted in the mind—and is often expressed by us in our love of learning, our “philosophy” or “Love of Wisdom.”