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Tuesday, September 17, 2024

O soror Sapientiae: A Chronogram for the Feast of St. Hildegard of Bingen

Wisdom
From the Stammheim Missal, fol. 11;
Getty Museum, Ms. 64 (97.MG.21))
o soror sapIentIae,
eLeCta et ereCta
Ita qVoD oMnes CreatVrae
per te ornatae sVnt:
nos VIrtVtIbVs fVLgentIbVs LargIter renoVarI
In VIsIonIbVs tVIs horterIs.

O wisdom’s sister,
chosen and upraised
so that all creation
has been graced by you:
in your visions you call on us
to be bountifully renewed with gleaming virtues.

(O soror Sapientiae, electa et erecta ita quod omnes creaturae per te ornatae sunt: nos virtutibus fulgentibus largiter renovari in visionibus tuis horteris.)

To honor St. Hildegard of Bingen this year, I have incorporated lines from one of her own poems to celebrate the great gifts that God has given to the world through her. The lyric text, O magna res, extols the great mystery of God’s vital existence as it bursts forth into creation, mediated by “the female form” (feminea forma), which stands for both the first woman, Eve, and Mary, the mother of God. The whole of womanhood is therefore declared to be “the sister of Wisdom” (soror Sapientiae), for Wisdom is God’s creative, feminine agent in biblical texts such as Proverbs 8, Sirach 1, and Wisdom of Solomon. In the final lines of the poem, Hildegard says the female form:

Te Sapientia erexit,
ita quod omnes creature
per te ornate sunt,
in meliorem partem
quam in primo acciperent.		 For Wisdom raised you up
to grace all creatures
to receive through you
a better portion
than before.

I have made bold to address St. Hildegard today with the same words, that we might be encouraged by her visions and teachings to receive that better portion and to be adorned and renewed with the virtues. If you are familiar with my work on Hildegard’s treatment of the Virgin Mary in Scivias, you will know that the virtues are indeed gleaming exemplars of God’s power streaming down to grace us and exhort us onto the same path trod by the Virgin to her place as Queen of Heaven.

About the Chronogram

The chronogram is an epigrammatic form where, if you take all of the letters that are also Roman numerals (I, V[U], X, L, C, D, and M, which are capitalized in the prayer above) and add their values together, the result is the year you are commemorating. In this case, 1 M = 1000, + 1 D = 1500, + 3 C’s = 1800, + 3 L’s = 1950, + 12 V[U]’s = 2010, + 14 I’s = 2024. I was inspired to write chronograms to honor Hildegard by those composed by Sr. Walburga Storch, O.S.B., a nun of the Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, Germany, which appeared in Festschriften for the Sibyl of the Rhine in 1979 and 1998.

Here are links to previous chronograms I have composed for St. Hildegard:

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