New Article: “The prophetess and the pope: St. Hildegard of Bingen, Pope Benedict XVI, and prophetic visions of church reform”

Nathaniel M. Campbell, “The prophetess and the pope: St. Hildegard of Bingen, Pope Benedict XVI, and prophetic visions of church reform,” postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 10.1 (2019), 22-35; read online for free here.

Just published in a special issue devoted to “Prophetic Futures,” this article explores the affinities between St. Hildegard of Bingen and Pope Benedict XVI that may have led him to canonize her and declare her a Doctor of the Church in 2012. It pays special attention to their views on the Church’s prophetic mission and prophecy’s role in reforming it.

Abstract

O spectabiles viri (Symphonia 31)

For the Feast of the Prophet Ezekiel, an Antiphon for Patriarchs and Prophets
by St. Hildegard of Bingen ^[1]

Scivias III.4: The Pillar
of the Word of God.
Rupertsberg MS, fol. 145v.

O spectabiles viri qui pertransistis occulta, aspicientes per oculos spiritus et annuntiantes in lucida umbra acutam et viventem lucem in virga germinantem, que sola floruit de introitu radicantis luminis: Vos antiqui sancti, predixistis salvationem exulum animarum que inmerse fuerant morti, qui circuisti ut rote, mirabiliter loquentes      mistica montis qui celum tangit, pertransiens ungendo      multas aquas, cum etiam inter vos surrexit lucida lucerna, que ipsum montem precurrens          ostendit.

O men of sight—what a sight! Through mysteries you’ve passed with gaze of spirit’s eyes, to announce in shining shadow a living, piercing light that buds upon that single branch that flourished at the entrance of deep-rooted light: You saints of old! You have foretold salvation of souls in exile plunged, in death immersed. You circled, spun like wheels as wondrously proclaimed      the mountain’s mysteries whose top the heavens touched and passed through many waters      with anointing— yet still among you arose a shining lamp that raced ahead, that mountain      to reveal.

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.

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.

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?