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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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.
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.
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| 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. |
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| 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! |
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| 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. |
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| 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! |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen. From the Rupertsberg Scivias, fol. 1r. |
(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.)
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| "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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
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.
