Guest Post at Beyond Borders

I've written this week’s guest post over at the medieval art history blog, Beyond Borders. Titled, “Monstrosity within the Church in Hildegard of Bingen’s Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript,” it explores the hybridized, monumental images of Ecclesia (the Church) in that manuscript, with a specific eye to the ways in which the monstrous and grotesque are central to the images, rather than marginalized, as in many later, Gothic-style manuscripts. The design of the images in the Ruperstberg manuscript transgresses medieval conventions in order to make explicit Hildegard's reformist message against monstrosity within the Church.

Go check it out!

Hildegard of Bingen and the Doctoral Stars

Liber Divinorum Operum I.2:
Macrocosm and Microcosm.
(Lucaa MS 1942)

In the second vision of St. Hildegard of Bingen’s final and most important work, the Liber Divinorum Operum, she lays out a vast schematic of the universe, structured around a series of swirling spheres that nest, one inside the other, down to the globe of the earth at their center. Evenly spaced around and within its outermost sphere, which she describes as a “circle of bright fire”, she sees sixteen principal stars that “strengthen each part of the firmament with their powers,” and “simultaneously hold [it] together (...) with the rightness of an even and necessary but not excessive number. Like the nails that hold together the wall in which they are fixed, these cannot be moved from their places but orbit with the firmament as they keep it solidly fixed together.” (Liber Divinorum Operum I.2.39)

Hildegard then proceeds to offer an allegorical interpretation of the place of each physical feature of the universe within the life of faith and the history of salvation. Of these sixteen principal stars arranged along the outer circumference of the sky, she writes:

These signify that in the pure wholeness of divine power exist the principal teachers (doctores) who have taught and continue to teach that the ten commandments of the law are to be fulfilled throughout the six ages of the world. (…) For these teachers exhort the faithful throughout the four parts of the world to tremble at the fear of the Lord (…), so that because of this holy dread, they should stop sinning.
         —Liber Divinorum Operum I.2.42

Little could Hildegard have known that one day, her name would be added to the catalogue of these great and stellar teachers of the faith.

Women’s Ordination, Part 2: More Thoughts and Reconsiderations

St. Hildegard of Bingen,
Scivias II.5: Orders of the Church.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 66r.

After offering an initial set of thoughts in my last post on the possibilities for using ancient notions of ordination to expand the authority of women in today’s Church while also preserving the sacramental reasons for the male priesthood, I had a lively conversation with various friends and colleagues that brought to light several areas of concern, reconsideration, and clarification:

1. An Order of Doctors? The magisteria of bishops and of theologians

Women’s Ordination: Teaching Authority, Sacramentality, and the Priesthood

Scivias II.6:
Ecclesia offers the Eucharist.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 86r.

With the declaration of St. Hildegard of Bingen as the fourth female Doctor (Teacher) of the Church last year, my thoughts have turned repeatedly to the question of how women have exercised teaching and other institutional authority within the Church, and to how the examples of the past might shape the future of the Body of Christ. As western society has moved decisively over the last century to break down the structural inequalities of patriarchy that had for so long held women inferior to men, the silence that the Church still seems to command of women in its own institutional structures deafens ever more with the cries of injustice. Indeed, several commentators noticed the seeming disconnect between Pope Benedict’s canonization and valorization of Hildegard, on the one hand, and the nearly simultaneous criticism of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the other. How can the Church authorize one of her most stridently critical prophetic voices as one of her most important teachers of the faith, and yet continue to bar entry into its modern magisterium to the women who serve that faith today?

Text vs. Image in the Lucca Illustration of Liber Divinorum Operum I.2: Humanity and the Macrocosmos

Humanity and the Macrocosmos.
Liber Divinorum Operum I.2
(Lucca MS 1942)

With the advent of the summer months, I have set to work again on my new translation of Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Divinorum Operum. Last week saw me (re)tackling the second vision of the work, in which Hildegard revises her vision of the cosmos in the shape of an egg in Scivias I.3 into an elaborate series of “circles” whirling one inside the other, with a grand human figure standing astride the spinning globe. The vision text is extremely complex and intricate in its details, especially as Hildegard begins to describe the interplay of the four principal winds and their eight collateral winds, each represented by an animal’s head. As one reads through it, one feels compelled to pull out paper and pencil and to sketch it out, simply in order to keep straight above and below, left and right, east and west, north and south. In the course of carefully piecing together each detail, it soon became clear to me that the famed illustration of this vision in the thirteenth-century Lucca manuscript—so often compared to da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”—has several significant flaws:

Book Review: The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen

Eric Rasmussen. The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. xv + 212 pp.

A British fantasist whose playboy image is a sham; a New York couple drowning together while on holiday at a resort in Maine; and the unintentionally sticky fingers of both Pope Paul VI and the author himself (pp. 91-92): each makes an appearance in Eric Rasmussen’s The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios. This volume serves as the popular equivalent of a “Behind the Scenes” documentary for Rasmussen’s monumental scholarly project of the last two decades: to track down and catalogue in exhaustive detail as many as possible of the 232 known extant copies of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s works, considered by many to be one of the most important and prized printed books in the English language.

Laus Trinitati (Symphonia 26)

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

Scivias II.2: The Trinity.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 47r.

Laus Trinitati que sonus et vita ac creatrix omnium in vita ipsorum est, et que laus angelice turbe et mirus splendor      archanorum, que hominibus ignota sunt, est,  et que in omnibus vita est.

Praise to the Trinity— the sound and life and creativity of all within their life; the praise of the angelic host and wondrous, brilliant      splendor hidden, unknown to human minds, and yet its mystery is life within all things.

O ignee Spiritus (Symphonia 27)

A Hymn to the Holy Spirit by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Scivias II.4: Tower
of the Holy Spirit.
Rupertsberg MS,
fol. 60r.

1. O ignee Spiritus, laus tibi sit, qui in timpanis et citharis operaris. 2. Mentes hominum de te flagrant      et tabernacula animarum eorum vires ipsarum continent. 3. Inde voluntas ascendit et gustum anime tribuit, et eius lucerna est desiderium. 4. Intellectus te in dulcissimo sono      advocat ac edificia tibi cum racionalitate parat, que in aureis operibus sudat.

1. O fiery Spirit, praise to you, who on the tympana and lyre play! 2. By you the human mind is set ablaze, the tabernacle of its soul contains its strength. 3. So mounts the will and grants the soul to taste— desire is its lamp. 4. In sweetest sound the intellect      upon you calls, a dwelling-place prepares for you, with reason sweating in the golden labor.

Karitas habundat (Symphonia 25)

(Caritas abundat)
An Antiphon for the Holy Spirit by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

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

Karitas habundat in omnia, de imis excellentissima super sidera atque amantissima in omnia, quia summo regi osculum pacis       dedit.

Love abounds in all, from the depths exalted and excelling over every star, and most beloved of all, for to the highest King she gave the kiss of peace.

Spiritus sanctus vivificans vita (Symphonia 24)

For Pentecost, an Antiphon for the Holy Spirit by St. Hildegard of Bingen^[1]

Scivias II.4:
Confirmation.
Rupertsberg MS,
fol. 60r.

Spiritus sanctus vivificans vita movens omnia, et radix est in omni creatura ac omnia de inmunditia      abluit, tergens crimina, ac ungit vulnera, et sic est fulgens ac laudabilis vita,      suscitans et resuscitans omnia.

The Holy Spirit: living and life-giving, all things moving, the root of all created being: of filth and muck it washes      all things clean— no guilty stains remaining, its balm our wounds constraining— and so its life with praise is shining, rousing and reviving all.

Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript

Imago expandit splendorem suum...
Scivias II.3: The Church and Baptism.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 51r.

Update: The full article on which this presentation was based has now been published in Eikón / Imago 4 (2013:2), pp. 1-68, available electronically here.

A major point of contention within Hildegard studies is the question of her role in the production of the illuminated Scivias manuscript known as the Rupertsberg Codex.^[1] Much current German scholarship has tended to preclude Hildegard’s hand by dating the manuscript’s production after her death in 1179, based on stylistic comparisons to firmly dateable contemporary manuscripts or on the many places where the images in the manuscript diverge from or even contradict the text of the visions. Pre-war German scholars, however, who had access to the original manuscript before it was lost, and most modern Anglophone scholars have argued more or less strongly for Hildegard’s influence on the design. Today, I argue for Hildegard’s direction of the images based on their function as a theological discourse refracting the text. I propose that the manuscript was produced in the late 1160’s or early 1170’s, at about the same time Hildegard was writing the Liber Divinorum Operum; and that she designed the images specifically to offer a visual record of the work’s theology.

48th International Congress on Medieval Studies: May 9-12, 2013

I am pleased to announce that I have received a portion of the 2013 James J. Paxson Memorial Travel Grant from the BABEL Working Group, to help defray the cost of my attendance at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in a few weeks.

I will be presenting on Thursday, May 9, at 1:30 p.m., in Session 94 (Bernhard 210), “Hildegard von Bingen: Bridges to Infinity,” sponsored by the International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies. My paper is titled, “Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript.” I have copied the abstract below, and you can read the full text here.

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?