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!

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.

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.

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.

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.