Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions (The New Middle Ages) [1st ed. 2022] 3031171918, 9783031171918

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THE NEW MIDDLE AGES

Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions Dinah Wouters

The New Middle Ages Series Editor

Bonnie Wheeler English and Medieval Studies Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX, USA

The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections.

Dinah Wouters

Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions

Dinah Wouters Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ISSN 2945-5936     ISSN 2945-5944 (electronic) The New Middle Ages ISBN 978-3-031-17191-8    ISBN 978-3-031-17192-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit line: Alan Keith Beastall / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The research for this book was funded by a generous PhD Fellowship for fundamental research from the Research Foundation Flanders. Part of Chap. 5 has previously appeared in a different form as “‘Nisi per Nomina’: Language as the medium of thought in Hildegard of Bingen’s thinking.” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 113.1–2: 66–93. I am grateful to the editorial board for their permission to reproduce part of that material here. This book has come a long way since I wrote the first chapter of it in 2016. Readers of earlier versions regularly observed that my style of writing and argumentation were a bit too similar to some of Hildegard’s most obscure visions. I want to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me over the years to formulate my arguments and develop the thesis of the book. My greatest thanks go to my PhD supervisor Wim Verbaal, for his invaluable advice and inspiration. I am happy to have found a supervisor who has not only taught me to find my way through academia, but who has also always cared about my personal well-being in it. I also want to thank my co-supervisor Jeroen Deploige, for sharing his knowledge of Hildegard and his keen eye for non-sequiturs and hollow phrases. Furthermore, I am grateful for the guidance, feedback, and help I have received from Rob Faesen and Francesco Stella, for their encouragement and their much-appreciated investment of time and energy. My gratitude also goes out to the members of my examination committee, Willemien Otten, Frank Bezner, William Flynn, Veerle Fraeters, and Floris Bernard, for their interest, their insights, and invaluable comments. v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply grateful for the support and feedback I received from former colleagues of the Latin section at Ghent University. At every moment, I felt myself surrounded and supported by people whose genuine interest, help, and encouragement I cannot estimate high enough. I thank the reading group of our Latin section, who have read each of my chapters over the years and have shared their valuable insights on them. I am also grateful for the enthusiasm of the people who came to my Bible reading group, where I learned much that was important for constructing my argument. I especially thank Tim Noens, Thomas Velle, and Maxim Rigaux for listening to my rambling hypothesising during endless conversations at the coffee machine and for offering their own perspectives. I thank Theo Lap for thinking along, and Stijn Praet, Klazina Staat, and Berenice Verhelst for helpful advice. My special thanks go out to Jeroen de Gussem. Our ideas on Hildegard converged in a delightful way, and I learned a lot from our discussions while we wrote an article on them together. I want to mention especially Tim Noens, Stijn Praet, Simon Aerts, and Simon Corveleyn, for helping to correct earlier versions of this book, and my colleague in Amsterdam Kerrewin Van Blanken for helping to make Chap. 5 more accessible at a very late stage. I want to express my gratitude to the anonymous peer reviewers for their careful reading and to the editors at Palgrave for their support. Furthermore, I am thankful to more people than I can mention for the interesting conversations at conferences, for the right questions at the right time, for encouragement and advice, and for sharing their knowledge and enthusiasm. Especially, I want to thank Mette Bruun and her team at Copenhagen for the occasion of presenting my research for the first time. I am also very grateful for the insights and friendships gained during my research visit with the Centre for Medieval Literature in York. I want to thank the Seminar of Premodern Texts at Stockholm University and the Ruusbroec Institute at University of Antwerp, for inviting me to share and discuss my thoughts with them. Lastly, I want to express my gratitude to my friends, my family, and my partner, for their genuine interest over the years, for their questions about Hildegard and the Middle Ages, and for delightful conversations, during which I gradually came to realise what I actually wanted to say.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Integumental Hermeneutics and Prescholastic Philosophy   9 Allegory, Language, and Cognition  15 Linking Allegorical Form to Allegorical Theory  18 References  23 2 V  ision and Explanation 27 Vision and Explanation  27 The Function of the Allegory  30 The Formal Interplay of Allegory and Allegoresis  34 Allegory and Symbol  41 References  44 3 A  llegory as Form and Concept 47 Distinguishing Between Allegory and Allegoresis  49 Prejudiced Distinctions in Modern Theory  50 Blurred Distinctions in Medieval Hermeneutics  55 Interactions Between Allegoresis and Allegory  62 Allegory as Form: Figurative Language and Levels of Meaning  64 Metaphor  64 Pun  66 Personification  72 Metonymy  76

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Allegory as Idea: A Vital Belief and Conceptions of Allegory  79 Language: Suprarealism and Self-Consciousness  79 Reality: Fabulism and Figuralism  81 Reversal of Values  85 References  89 4 E  xegetical Form: The Eccentric Exegesis of the Homilies 93 Creative Allegoresis in the Expositiones  94 Multiple Interpretations and Narrative Continuity  97 A Formal Definition for the Literal Level  98 A Narrative Definition for the Senses of Scripture 100 Creating a Narrative 107 Exegetical Method: The Miraculous Catch of Allegory? 109 The Allegoresis of the Expositiones and the Allegory of the Visions 114 References 115 5 A  llegorical form: Narrative, the Cosmos, and the End of Time117 The Narrative of the Parables 118 The Reality of the Cosmos 125 The Textuality of Visionary Reality 125 The Reality of the Textual Cosmos 128 The End of Time 135 References 143 6 A  llegorical Cognition through Words145 Hildegard’s Model of the Mind 147 Other Models of Cognition 148 The Circular Mind 152 Perceptions as Cognitive Agents 157 The Absence of Mental Images 162 The Essential Role of Words 164 The Promotion of Words Over Images 165 Hildegard’s Turn to Language 171 Exegetical Cognition 179 From Hermeneutics to Epistemology 183 Allegorical Creation from Exegetical Method 188 Glossing and Properties 188

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Allegorical Handbooks 190 The Cognitive Dynamics of Reading Allegorically 198 References 199 7 A  llegorical Revelation through Prophecy205 Allegorical Interpretation as an Essential Part of Revelation History 205 The Old, the New, and the Interpretation of Each 205 Allegory in Deeds and in Words 209 Veils and Illumination 212 Allegory and Forms of Prophecy 215 Clarity, Obscurity, and Hildegard’s Prophetic Goals 220 Different Kinds of Prophecy in Hildegard’s Works 224 Cognition and Forms of Visionary Experience 225 Augustine’s Theory of Vision 226 Hildegard’s Visio Spiritualis/Intellectualis 227 Augustine’s Cognitive Visions 233 The Continuity Between Vision and Cognition in Medieval Texts 237 Becoming a Prophet 239 The Prophet and the Reader 241 References 244 8 B  eliefs about Language and the Construction of Allegorical Form247 Allegorical Visions and Scripture 250 Exceptional Language and the Reference to Nature 255 Reversal of Allegory and Allegoresis 259 Allegorical Form and Truth 262 Allegorical Language 265 The Origin and Fall of Language 268 In Search of a Theological Language 270 A Sphere of Literary Symbolism? 272 Hildegard’s Faith in Language 274 Conclusion 282 References 284 Index289

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Part of the Allegoresis of Scivias I,1,1 (Allegory Left, Allegoresis Right) Table 2.2 Part of the Allegoresis of Liber Vite Meritorum I,76 Table 2.3 Part of the Allegoresis of Liber Divinorum Operum I,1,4 (1) Table 2.4 Part of the Allegoresis of Liber Divinorum Operum I,1,4 (2)

38 39 40 41

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

“And look, in the forty-third year of my lifetime, when with great fear and trembling concentration I was cleaving to a heavenly vision, I saw a great brightness, in which a voice from heaven said to me: ‘O frail human, you who are ash of ash and rottenness of rottenness, speak and write of what you see and hear.’”1 With this command begins Scivias, the first book of visions by Hildegard of Bingen. By opening in this fashion, the visionary claims for herself a seat among the prophets. Her words echo those of Ezekiel, for whom it was “in the thirtieth year” of his life, “in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month,” that the heavens opened and he saw visions.2 Hildegard later adds to her own account that it happened more specifically when she was forty-two years and seven months old. Hildegard began her prophetic career at the age of forty-two, in the middle of her lifetime. Born just before the turn of the century, in 1098,  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). “Et ecce quadragesimo tertio temporalis cursus mei anno, cum caelesti uisioni magno timore et tremula intentione inhaererem, uidi maximum splendorem, in quo facta est uox de caelo ad me dicens: ‘O homo fragilis, et cinis cineris, et putredo putredinis, dic et scribe quae uides et audis.’” 2  Ezekiel 1,1. “Et factum est in trigesimo anno, in quarto, in quinta mensis, cum essem in medio captivorum juxta fluvium Chobar, aperti sunt caeli, et vidi visiones Dei.”/“In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.” 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5_1

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she would live until the year 1179. As a woman and a member of a small group of nuns living a secluded life in the shadow of the male monastery of Disibodenberg, it was not very likely that she would ever commit her own words to parchment. Still, towards the end of her life, Hildegard was a famous author with an extended oeuvre to her name. She was able to secure this authorship by linking it to her identity of visionary prophet. In all of her texts, Hildegard speaks as a visionary: she says that she sees images in her head given to her by God. In addition, she claims it her duty to communicate the wisdom she receives from these images to others, with the goal of effecting a change in society. This makes her not only a visionary but a prophet. A central place in this project is occupied by the three great books of visions, of which Scivias is the first and most famous. The visions in these books proceed through the description of abstract allegorical images. After each description, Hildegard hears the voice of God, who explains to her what each form, colour, figure, or movement in the vision signifies. In the autobiographical parts from her vita, Hildegard explains how she became a visionary, a prophet, and an author (in that order).3 She opens as follows: Et ego uerba hec non dico de me, sed uera sapientia dicit ista de me et sic loquitur ad me: ‘Audi, o homo, uerba hec et dic ea non secundum te, sed secundum me et docta per me hoc modo dic de te. In prima formatione mea, cum Deus in utero matris mee spiraculo uite suscitauit me, uisionem istam infixit anime mee. Nam post incarnationem Christi anno millesimo centesimo doctrina apostolorum et ardens iusticia, quam in christianis et spiritualibus constituerat, tardare cepit et in hesitacionem uertebatur. Illis temporibus nata sum […].

3  On Hildegard’s biography, see Sabina Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179: A Visionary Life, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1998); Anton Philipp Brück, Hildegard von Bingen, 1179–1979  : Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen (Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1979); Alfred Haverkamp, Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld, In  Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld. Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongreß zum 900jährigen Jubiläum (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2000); Rainer Berndt, Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001); Felix Heinzer, ‘Unequal Twins: Visionary Attitude and Monastic Culture in Elisabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen’, in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra Stoudt, and George Ferzoco (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 85–108.

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It is not me speaking these words about myself. It is the divine Wisdom who speaks about me and addresses me with the following words: ‘Listen, human, to these words, and speak not in your own voice but with my voice. Learn from me how to speak about yourself: ‘When I was formed in the womb of my mother, when God breathed the spark of life into me, he planted this way of seeing in my soul. Because in the year 1100 after the incarnation of Christ, the doctrine of the apostles and the burning sense of justice that they had instituted in Christian and religious people, began to cool and changed to hesitation. In these times I was born […].’4

Later in this excerpt, she recounts how she had been having visions from a very young age and how she eventually confided in her fellow anchoress Jutta and a monk from the Disibodenberg monastery called Volmar. The latter encouraged Hildegard to write down her revelations. He would become her loyal secretary after the move from Disibodenberg to the Rupertsberg near Bingen. The moment evoked in the Scivias prologue is not, as for Ezekiel, the moment when Hildegard first perceived her visions, but the moment when she first felt capable, intellectually and emotionally, of writing them down. Scivias took ten years to write, and during this time, many things changed. Her fame spread quickly in a time and place alive with the fervour for spiritual reform. Already a local celebrity, Hildegard moved her community from the woodlands to the banks of the Rhine, much against the wishes of the monks at Disibodenberg. At the new monastery on the Rupertsberg, Hildegard devoted the second half of her long life to writing. A witness to her prolific activity as a writer is the so-called Riesenkodex,5 a compilation of all her writings minus the texts on natural science and medicine. Work on this huge manuscript was likely begun at the end of Hildegard’s life, possibly with an eye to the canonisation process.6 I will use its contents to give an overview of Hildegard’s oeuvre. The codex opens with the three great books of visions: 4  Theodoric of Echternach, Vita sanctae Hildegardis, ed. M. Klaes-Hachmöller (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), chap. II,2. 5  Hildegard of Bingen, “Riesenkodex” (n.d.), MS 2, Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek RheinMain; Michael Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen. Studien zu ihrer Überlieferung und Rezeption im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit., Erudiri Sapientia 6 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003). 6  Albert Derolez, “The Manuscript Transmission of Hildegard of Bingen’s Writings: The State of the Problem,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 17–28.

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Scivias, Liber vite meritorum (The Book of the Rewards of Life), and Liber divinorum operum (The Book of the Divine Works). These three books will be the focus of this study. They all consist of a series of visions connected through a simple repetition of the words “and then I saw.” The visions themselves all follow the same sequence: abstract allegorical configurations followed by a word-for-word allegoresis, which gives rise to doctrinal or moral elaborations. Scivias and Liber divinorum operum are both texts that seek to capture the whole thematic range of theology. They each have a threefold structure, which represents a trinitarian structure projected onto history.7 However, the works differ in focus, tone, and complexity. The first part of Scivias treats themes such as creation, cosmos, body and soul, the synagogue, and the angels. It contains six visions. Symbolically, six is the number of creation without salvation, creation uncrowned by the seventh day. In her commentary on the creation narrative (Liber divinorum operum II,1), Hildegard indicates that the seventh day, the day of rest, stands for the incarnation. This corresponds to the number of visions in the second part of Scivias. In seven visions, this second part treats the themes of the Incarnation, the Trinity, the church and its sacraments, and the devil. The third part combines the first and the second, both in number of visions and theme. Its thirteen visions describe in great detail an allegorical building, which is called the “edifice of salvation.” The book ends with a vision of the Last Judgment and a concert of symphonies. Scivias is more pedagogical in tone than the later works. It makes heavy use of the question-answer format, for instance. The structure of Liber divinorum operum is more opaque. Like Scivias, its third part contains an edifice of salvation and an account of the end times, in five visions, and the first part likewise focuses on the human within the cosmos, in four visions. The middle part consists of only one vision, which interprets the different parts of the world as a moral allegory. The visions in Liber divinorum operum are characterised by a stronger coherence. The diachronic progression through salvation history is less central than the place of the human within the divine cosmos. The same 7  Christel Meier makes a case for projecting this trinitarian structure onto all three books of visions and among the three books of visions as a whole in Christel Meier, ‘Eriugena im Nonnenkloster? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Prophetentum und Werkgestalt in den figmenta prophetica Hildegards von Bingen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 19 (1985): 488–91.

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themes that were in Scivias recur in this later work, but they are treated in a more elaborate and complex way. This is a treatise for the more advanced reader. But it is not only the readership that is different. The author, too, has changed some of her ideas and her language.8 This study will regularly zoom in on these differences. Whereas the other two books of visions concentrate on creation and redemption, Liber vite meritorum has a tropological-anagogical focus. The first five of the six visions in total share the same structure: personifications fight each other with words, and then the real-life consequences of listening to the vices and not the virtues are shown as a vision of sinners being punished in the afterlife. The sixth vision shows the Last Judgement. What thus remains a constant in all three books of visions is that they span the course of salvation history from creation to judgement. Following the visionary trilogy, the Riesenkodex includes an important letter to the prelates of Mainz about music, and the Vita Hildegardis. These are followed by the rest of the extensive collection of letters, which were collected and bundled to show the prophet’s network and influence. Next, we find a collection of Homilies on the Gospels (Expositiones evangeliorum): exegetical texts which lean close to allegory and which will as such be at the centre of Chap. 4. Next come the two must curious texts of the prophet’s oeuvre: Lingua ignota and Litterae ignotae, that is, an alphabet and list of words invented by Hildegard. Next to last is a letter in which the monks of Villers ask Hildegard for the answers to a number of theological questions. The manuscript closes with Hildegard’s musical oeuvre, consisting of the Symphonia and the liturgical drama Ordo Virtutum. What made this prolific authorship possible? To consolidate her position, Hildegard needed to strike a balance between subversiveness and conservatism. This is typical for the role of the prophet. A prophet is someone who brings a divine message to a society and who urges change and reform.9 But the prophet is no revolutionary: he or she addresses the elite and finds an audience there. A prophet should not be a part of the

8  Jeroen de Gussem and Dinah Wouters, “Language and Thought in Hildegard of Bingen’s Visionary Trilogy: Close and Distant Readings of a Thinker’s Development,” Parergon 36, no. 1 (2019). 9  Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179 : A Visionary Life.

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established order but should also not be a complete outsider.10 This is the case for Hildegard. On the one hand, as a daughter of a noble family herself, she had good contacts among the nobility and the higher clergy. Nor was she averse to a certain elitism. She believed that the ranks and classes of society all have their own task and must remain separate.11 Her message was rather conservative as well. Hildegard wanted society to go back to a time that she envisioned as a period when people were still genuinely religious and the church had the moral authority to propagate Christian values ​​to society. Her main audience was the clergy, from whom she demanded strong moral leadership. This message is in itself not very subversive and coincided with a general call for ecclesiastical reform and spiritual renewal at the beginning of the twelfth century. But that the message came from a woman, from an unlearned nun living at a remote monastery, was extremely unusual. Hildegard, like most religious of her class, knew enough Latin to read the Bible and follow the liturgy. But she had not learned to analyse or write texts herself, let alone that she would have been trained in theology and philosophy. However, Hildegard knew how to use even this to her advantage. According to her, her lack of education proved that her fundamental insights into philosophy and theology, formulated in correct Latin sentences, did not stem from her own brain. The melodies she composed could not be anything other than divinely inspired. She challenged church leaders by stating that God chose a weak and unlearned woman as his messenger because the elite themselves had become weak. The balance between subversion and conservatism is also reflected in Hildegard’s authorial voice. “It is not me speaking these words about myself,” we read in the excerpt quoted earlier. The prologue to Scivias is a unique document expressing how a medieval prophet experiences her visions. The way in which Hildegard dives into her own mind to describe how she perceives her visions and how she feels about them is nothing short of radical in the mid-twelfth century. The innovative aspect was not that someone had visions, because the genre of the vision texts had a long 10  Jeroen Deploige, “The Priest, the Prophet, and the Magician: Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu vs Hildegard of Bingen,” in The Voice of Silence: Women’s Literacy in a Men’s Church, vol. 9 (Brepols, 2004), 3–22. 11  Alfred Haverkamp, “Tenxwind von Andernach und Hildegard von Bingen. Zwei ‘Weltanschauungen’ in der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Verfassung, Kultur, Lebensform. Beiträge zur italienischen, deutschen und jüdischen Geschichte im europäischen Mittelalter, ed. Alfred Haverkamp et al., 1997, 321–60.

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tradition that went back at least to the biblical prophets. What was new is that the visionary brings herself to the foreground. Paradoxically, this unprecedentedly personal voice is attributed to someone other than the visionary herself, for Hildegard says that she does not speak in her own voice. This is also what she constantly emphasizes in her books of visions. According to Hildegard, she does not write down her own knowledge in her own words but acts as a mediator for the wisdom handed to her by God himself. I have described how Hildegard seizes the opportunity to write by invoking the concept of the visionary prophet. During that process, something unique arises. That someone identifies as a visionary, prophet, and author had not happened since Antiquity. The medieval tradition up to the twelfth century has many descriptions of visions, but the persons who experience visions often do not write down these experiences themselves. Their visions are either symbolic dreams containing a message for a local community, or they belong to the genre of the journey through the afterlife. In the latter, a sinner’s soul, suspended between life and death, is guided through hell, purgatory, and heaven. When such a traveller returns from the hereafter, he does not write down his own story and he certainly does not consider himself a prophet. The other and more frequent kind of vision that was written down is the visionary dream. We mostly find them in the chronicles or vitae of monasteries. They are reports about monks or nuns or, occasionally, laypeople who have unusual dreams and realise that the dream contains a message to either themselves or their community. Constant Mews has noted how many such visionary dreams pop up in the wake of the Hirsau reform movement of the later eleventh century, which influenced the Disibodenberg monastery as well.12 He mentions, for instance, the recluse Herluca of Epfach, in whose vita we find descriptions of a vision of Christ and of the soul of a deceased priest whom Herluca knew.13 There is also the chronicle of the Petershausen monastery, which reports on the allegorical vision seen in a dream by a certain monk named Bernard. The report of this vision is accompanied by an illustration, which reminds of

12   Constant J.  Mews, “Hildegard of Bingen and the Hirsau Reform in Germany 1080–1180,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Stoudt, Debra L., and Ferzoco, George (Brill, 2014), 57–83. 13  Mews, 66–68.

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Hildegard’s visions.14 Lastly, there is the Liber Visionum by Otloh of St Emmeram, a friend of William of Hirsau. In the book, modelled on Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, Otloh describes four of his own visionary experiences as well as those of others.15 In contrast to earlier medieval visionaries, Hildegard again combines the functions of prophet, visionary, and author. First, she becomes an author by writing down her own visions. Moreover, she has herself portrayed as an author in the miniatures accompanying them, which is highly unusual. She portrays herself in these miniatures as a prophet receiving inspiration and as an author writing on a wax tablet. Second, Hildegard describes herself as a different kind of visionary. Hildegard’s visions are not passing experiences but a constant mode of observation in her mind. She stresses that her visions are not just events in her life, but a way of thinking and seeing that is specific to her person. In this way, she connects herself inextricably to her texts. The prophetic message can no longer be separated from the seer, and the visionary prophet cannot be separated from the author. Third, unlike earlier medieval visions, Hildegard’s visions are those of a prophet: abstract, allegorical, and apocalyptic. This mode harkens back to the allegorical visions of the biblical prophets, and to the second-century dream vision of Pastor Hermas, which was first regarded as scriptural and then as an apocryphal text.16 Despite the importance Hildegard attached to the description of her personal visionary experience, the visions themselves are not personal. With Hildegard, we are still a long way from the emotionally experienced visions that will characterize the mystical tradition in later centuries. The twelfth-century prophet describes visions that are abstract and allegorical. The images do not relate to Hildegard’s personal situation or specific local communities, but contain knowledge about the entire history of humanity, past, present, and future. What Hildegard does is very ambitious and daring. Women were not supposed to write about theology and the interpretation of the Bible. However, this is just what Hildegard does in her books of visions: she designs a theological summa in which she systematically summarises knowledge from all kinds  Mews, 68–69.  Mews, 73. 16  Theodore Bogdanos, “‘The Shepherd of Hermas’ and the Development of Medieval Visionary Allegory,” Viator 8 (1977): 33; Peter Dronke, “The Symbolical Cities of Hildegard of Bingen,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 1 (1991): 168–83. 14 15

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of domains. The books even contain commentaries that interpret some of the most essential passages in the Bible. My thesis in this book is that the literary form of Hildegard’s visions reflects this new configuration of a twelfth-century author, prophet, and visionary. None of these elements are new, but the composite is. In the same way, I want to claim that the visions combine familiar formal elements in a new manner. The most striking characteristic of Hildegard’s use of allegory is the close companionship of allegory and interpretation. Christel Meier calls Hildegard’s allegories a typical example of a mixed form of allegory (Mischformen), more specifically a form in which the mix consists of allegorical vision, bible exegesis, and the allegorical exemplum in preaching.17 In all but the simplest cases, the allegory is not only accompanied by an interpretation, but the interpretation is also remarkably detailed, paying attention to each element of the allegory separately. I will highlight this element of systematicity, by which I mean that the method securing the link between allegorical vision and allegoresis is applied in an unprecedentedly strict manner. I want to link this systematicity to various changes that took place during the twelfth century in the domains of allegorical hermeneutics, the practice and theory of biblical exegesis, and language philosophy.

Integumental Hermeneutics and Prescholastic Philosophy In the work that has been done so far on the allegorical mode of Hildegard’s visions, her allegory is measured against the “allegory of the poets,” in particular Bernard Silvester and Alan of Lille.18 If Hildegard’s allegory is situated in the margins, then the allegorical poetry associated with the so-­ called School of Chartres is the uncontested focus of the study of allegory in the twelfth century. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, for instance, has a chapter on ‘Twelfth-century allegory: philosophy and imagination,’ 17  Christel Meier, “Überlegungen zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Allegorie-Forschung. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mischformen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10 (1976): 57. 18  Christel Meier, “Zwei Modelle von Allegorie im 12. Jahrhundert: Das allegorische Verfahren Hildegards von Bingen und Alans von Lille,” in Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 70–89; Peter Dronke, A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Hans Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Leipzig: BG Teubner, 1930).

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which only treats the school of Chartres.19 Another overview work, by Armand Strubel, looks back from the vernacular allegory of later centuries onto the familiar succession of Prudentius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Bernard Silvester, and Alan of Lille.20 Added to this list is sometimes Jean de Hanville’s Architrenius, “both the least known and the most controversial of major Chartrian allegories.”21 Ernst Robert Curtius thus envisaged a “golden chain” of allegorists running from Late Antiquity up to the twelfth century.22 The centrality of this allegorical tradition is closely linked to the idea of a renaissance of learning in the twelfth century, with the School of Chartres as “a sort of beacon of humanism and innovative scholarship in the early twelfth century.”23 Although it is important to nuance the ideas of a twelfth century renaissance or humanism, and of the School of Chartres as a collective of scholars,24 the allegories of Bernard Silvester and Alan of Lille are indeed focal points of twelfth-century developments such as the turn to cosmogony and Platonism, the idea of the human as a microcosm, the reinterpretation of antique texts as integumental allegories, and the preoccupation with the organisation of the liberal arts. Not only has Chartrian allegory been equated with twelfth-century allegory tout court, the discourse that surrounds it is often taken to be a 19  Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck, The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 20  Armand Strubel, “Grant senefiance a”: allégorie et littéraure au Moyen Age (Paris: Champion, 2002). 21  Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton university press, 1972), 10. 22  Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern: Francke, 1973), 121. 23  Jon Whitman, Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 212. 24  The fiercest opponent of the idea of the School of Chartres is Richard Southern, “The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert Louis Benson (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University, 1982), 113–37; Richard Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol. 1 : Foundations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). For a more nuanced view, see, for instance: Dronke, A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy; John Marenbon, “Review: Humanism, Scholasticism, and the School of Chartres,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 6, no. 4 (2000): 569–77. Winthrop Wetherbee summarises: “It must be understood that the Chartrian label is largely a matter of convenience, and refers to a body of ideas and the scholars and poets who developed them, as well as to an institution precisely located in place and time.” Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century, xii.

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literary theory for the twelfth century. Brian Stock, in his book on Bernard Silvester, says that “[t]he twelfth-century approach to myth […] possesses all the features of a consistent, systematic literary theory.”25 This literary theory revolves around the concept of involucrum or integumentum: the idea that moral or scientific truth can be narrated under the veil of a fictive element or story, such as Plato’s world soul or the tale of Aeneas. Characteristic of Chartrian allegory is that it combines a project of natural philosophy with literary forms and aims. Peter Dronke describes the combination as “a sphere of medieval writing in which the abstract and the concrete, ideas and images, are inextricably conjoined.”26 Looking somewhat beyond Chartrian allegory, Dronke groups those works that join creative allegory to Platonic influences under what he calls fabula, or the fabulous: Disparate as they are, these […] exemplify with exceptional clarity a fundamental creative element, which also distinguishes certain other medieval texts commonly grouped as ‘Platonic’. They are achievements not only of the rational intellect but of the fictive imagination. Their cosmological insights are nourished by imaginative springs as much as by the disciplined sources of abstract thinking. Theirs is a realm where sacred vision and profane myth can combine with analytical thought, poetic fantasy with physical and metaphorical speculation.27

Another aspect of this literary theory is its engagement with the old authors of Antiquity on new terms. As Wetherbee writes: Literary theory and practice were intimately related in the twelfth century, and a new appreciation of the vision and techniques of the ancient authors inspired moderni to expand the range of their own art and address problems not readily definable in terms of conventional wisdom.28

Chartrian allegory finds its language of allegorical form in the allegories of the late antique authors Boethius and Martianus Capella, as well as in the 25  Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton: Princeton university press, 1972), 49. 26  Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 1. 27  Dronke, 1. 28  Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century, 8.

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contemporary commentaries by William of Conches and Bernard Silvester on these texts and on the Aeneid. This interaction with the commentary tradition is especially important to Jon Whitman. In Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique, he demonstrates how literary allegory from Homer to Bernard Silvester found its form by adopting the solutions to exegetical problems.29 For instance, he shows how William of Conches’ and Thierry of Chartres’ philosophical conceptions of matter enable the allegorical form of the Cosmographia. To Whitman, the Cosmographia is not only a fine example of this process but also the culmination of it. His book paints the evolution of an ever more perfect interplay between allegory and exegesis, which comes to maturity in the twelfth century of Chartres and its natural philosophy. A critical note has been sounded by Frank Bezner, who decided to study the uses of the concept integumentum from the vantage point of Ideengeschichte or intellectual history.30 His aim is to break through the supposed uniformity of integumental hermeneutics: “the history of the integumentum in the twelfth century does not revolve around instances of a supra-temporal phenomenon, around a medieval consciousness, a system, a concept, an ‘other’ (such as an implied theory of the fictional).”31 29  Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 30  Frank Bezner, “Latet omne verum? Mittelalterliche ’Literatur’-Theorie interpretieren,” in Text und Kultur: Mittelalterliche Literatur, 1150–1450, ed. Ursula Peters (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001), 575–611; Frank Bezner, “Omnes excludendi sunt praeter domesticos: Eine mittelalterliche Reflexion über die sozialen und kommunikativen Bedingungen des Wissens,” in Ars und Scientia im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit: Ergebnisse interdisziplinärer Forschung, ed. Cora Dietl and Dörte Helschinger (Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke Verlag, 2002), 57–77; Frank Bezner, Vela veritatis: Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der Intellectual History des 12. Jahrhunderts, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 85 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005); Frank Bezner, “Figmenta animi oder der ‘Denkraum des Fiktiven’: Zur Entkopplung von Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit bei Peter Abailard,” in Impulse und Resonanzen, ed. Gisela Vollmann-Profe et  al. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2007), 19–33; Frank Bezner, “Iam non opus est figuris: Konzeptualisierung und Literarisierung des Figuralen bei Peter Abaelard,” in Figura: Dynamiken der Zeiten und Zeichen im Mittelalter, ed. Christian Kiening and Katharina Mertens Fleury (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013). 31  Bezner, Vela veritatis: Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der Intellectual History des 12. Jahrhunderts, 94. “die Geschichte des integumentum im 12. Jh. kreist nicht um Instanzen eines überzeitlichen Phänomens, um ein mittelalterliches Bewußtsein, ein System, einen Begriff, ein ‘Anderes’ (wie etwa eine implizierte Theorie des Fiktionalen).”

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Bezner criticizes approaches that identify integumental theories as a uniform mind-set (Chenu’s symbolic mentality), a mode (rhetoric as the medieval mode of hermeneutics), or a coherent theory (medieval semiotics and the idea of a language of things as a uniform hermeneutical theory). Especially the attempts to turn integumental hermeneutics into an autonomous literary sphere seem mistaken to Bezner. He designates this as an anachronism overshadowing other relevant connections, for instance theological, natural philosophical, and methodological horizons.32 To Bezner, all of these domains of knowledge are part of the hermeneutic field, but they do not structure it, let alone provide its underlying logic. Moreover, to view hermeneutics as a discipline often means to bring it into competition with the upcoming discipline of scholastic dialectics. What Bezner contends, however, is that integumental hermeneutics is itself a part of the emergence of new disciplines and new ways to structure knowledge. Rather than being external to these changes, it serves as a tool to think about the arts and sciences as disciplines with their own methodology. In Bezner’s opinion, thinking with the idea of a veiled truth is part of the process of rationalisation and Verwissenschaftlichung that plays out in the twelfth century through the rise of cathedral schools and, later, the institutionalisation of universities and through the renegotiation of scientific disciplines and their boundaries. The role of hermeneutics in this history is one that did not persist and is therefore neglected, but Bezner shows how it functioned as a tool for processes such as institutionalisation, intellectual exclusion and inclusion, and paradigm building. Specifically, the concept of a hidden truth was used to discuss the ambivalent role of language in the making of knowledge. Language is polysemous, which posed a problem to the process of the rationalisation of the arts and sciences. While developing a language philosophy in answer to this problem, for a short time prescholastic philosophy turned to the traditional hermeneutics of linguistic veiling. This approach, which characterised the formative period of scholasticism, was abandoned with the institutionalisation of the movement during the thirteenth century.33 This study will not directly compare Hildegard’s allegory with other allegorical texts of the twelfth century. Rather, it will describe how it similarly pulls up a constellation of old and new ideas and theories around itself, in order to claim a certain position in the intellectual field. The claim  Bezner, 83.  Bezner, 645.

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of this allegory is mainly one of radical difference with regard to rhetorical, literary, veiled allegories. Hildegard goes very far in asserting this difference, indeed her complete independence from the ideas and writings of others. She does not cite anyone except the biblical authors, not even the Church Fathers.34 Even allusions to other writers are hard to spot. Indeed, she seems to purposefully avoid making any explicit references to non-­ biblical texts. Peter Dronke has the sense “that verbal reminiscences have at times been deliberately covered over.”35 Christel Meier suspects that possible verbal resemblances to related ideas are avoided by using synonyms.36 Jochen Schröder demonstrates how, even when Hildegard builds on a biblical prophet, namely Ezekiel, she willfully conceals obvious similarities.37 She even keeps a distance from the liturgy: Felix Heinzer has noted with wonder that “the liturgically labelled chants in Hildegard’s writings do not appear to have any echo in the context of regular liturgical practice.”38 We will see in this book that Hildegard does also not use much recognisable terminology for allegory, let alone the word allegoria itself, but creates her own idiosyncratic vocabulary. Next to being the “mark of the individual creative will of [a] writer[…] of genius,” Dronke explains that “Hildegard’s dissembling of her learned debts also signified her refusal to in any sense compete with the clerical world. She was different, and aware of being different.”39 At the same time, my study will show that this strong claim of a radically different intellectual position can itself be viewed as partaking in a similar intellectual project to that of the authors that Bezner discusses. Just as the Chartrian writers used allegorical writing in the service of a philosophical project, and reflected on the philosophical status of allegorical 34  Jeroen Deploige, In nomine femineo indocta: kennisprofiel en ideologie van Hildegard van Bingen (1098–1179) (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998). 35  Peter Dronke, “The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 14. 36  Meier, “Zwei Modelle,” 82. 37  Jochen Schröder, “Die Formen der Ezechielrezeption in den Visionsschriften Hildegards von Bingen,” in Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst, ed. Rainer Berndt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 373. 38  Felix Heinzer, “Unequal Twins: Visionary Attitude and Monastic Culture in Elisabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen,” 97. 39  Dronke, “The Allegorical World-Picture,” 14.

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language, Hildegard creates a kind of allegorical writing that is deliberately different so that it reflects her different intellectual position as a visionary and prophet whose goal is moral and social renewal. Hildegard does not only use allegory, but reflects on it, makes it integral to her theories of language, cognition, revelation, and prophecy, and adapts allegorical forms so that they reflect these theories. In sum, just as Bezner describes the use that people like Abelard, William of Conches, Bernard Silvester and Alan of Lille make of allegorical discourses and allegorical writing, Hildegard models her allegory on her own intellectual project, which is at the same time a positioning with regard to the social and disciplinary changes of the pre-scholastic period.

Allegory, Language, and Cognition The work of Bezner calls for a more diverse view of all the fields in which allegory played a role. The concept of allegory has many different facets: it can be viewed as a literary form, as a linguistic phenomenon based on the possibility of polysemy in language, or as a theological method. In this book, I want to open up Hildegard’s use of allegory and allegorical theory to these many viewpoints, without situating it in one specific tradition. I want to study her systematic use of allegory both as specific to her unique position as a female visionary, prophet, and author, and as a positioning with regard to the changes affecting literature and knowledge within the intellectual movement that I will broadly typify as prescholastic. This means that I will try to look for points of contact between concepts that are central to Hildegard’s project, such as vision and prophecy, and her thinking on issues that are central to the twelfth-century project of rationalising and reconceptualising the different fields of knowledge, such as rationality and the role of language in cognition. The point of contact between the two will in many cases turn out to be allegory, with its double structure of meaning as the connector between divine visions and human cognition, between the inspired prophet and human language. I use ‘prescholastic philosophy’ in a broad sense, referring to the many twelfth-century intellectuals (at monasteries, cathedral schools, and budding universities) who were trying to organise knowledge in new ways, which would eventually lead to the new organisation of disciplines and

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knowledge in scholasticism.40 I will devote special attention to the shift from textual hermeneutics to language philosophy and epistemology, to the question of theological language, to new ways of organising biblical commentaries, such as new allegorical dictionaries, sentences collections, and summas, and to changing conceptualisations of the relation between Scripture and nature. New systematisations of knowledge, however, were undertaken by different scholars with different aims. Marcia Colish, who has used the term ‘systematic theology’ for the texts of people like Rupert of Deutz, Honorius of Autun, and Peter Lombard, notes that while monastic theologians wrote with the goal of instructing and stimulating contemplation and moral improvement, non-monastic authors also wrote with the goal of making theology into a professional discipline.41 This created tensions and anti-scholastic sentiments in the monasteries, and Hildegard clearly takes a stance in this debate. In 1998, Constant Mews admonished that “we cannot exclude Hildegard from the scholastic world in which she lived.”42 He refers to her trust in the “capacity of human rationality to know God.”43 Justin Stover took this line of reasoning further, showing how Hildegard, while berating scholastic schoolmasters for misusing their rationality, “argues with scholastic rigor” and “understands and is deeply engaged in the theological controversies” surrounding a certain debate.44 Scholastic, pastoral, and monastic environments were not separate spheres, and it was perfectly possible to engage with methods or modes of thinking while opposing concomitant ideals or changes in power. This is what my study wants to 40  Dronke, A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy; Marcia L. Colish, “Systematic Theology and Theological Renewal in the Twelfth Century,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18, no. 2 (1988): 135–56; Eileen Sweeney, “Rewriting the Narrative of Scripture: Twelfth-Century Debates over Reason and Theological Form,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 3 (1993): 1–34; Constant Mews, “Scholastic Theology in a Monastic Milieu in the Twelfth Century: The Case of Admont,” in Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany, ed. Alison Beach (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 217–39; Jean Leclercq, “Naming the Theologies of the Early Twelfth Century,” Mediaeval Studies 53 (1991): 327–36. 41  Colish, “Systematic Theology and Theological Renewal in the Twelfth Century,” 141. 42  Constant Mews, “Hildegard and the Schools,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke (London: The Warburg Institute, 1998), 110. 43  Mews, 103. 44  Justin A.  Stover, “Hildegard, the Schools, and Their Critics,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Kienzle, George Ferzoco, and Debra Stoudt (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 119–20.

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show with regard to Hildegard’s use of allegory and allegorical discourses. I will analyse both her systematisation of the form of allegory in her books of visions and her integration of allegorical discourses with theories on language and cognition. My argument is similar to that of Constant Mews but will take Hildegard further into the domain of language philosophy. Mews drew an opposition between the schoolmen who reflect on language and Hildegard who works with “her awareness of divinity as a living force which sustained both creation as a whole, and human life in particular.”45 I will show that Hildegard combined a fascination for the natural world and her organic way of thinking about human life and the macrocosm with an interest in the mediating role of language and individual cognition. Both the images of the natural world and their representation as words in the mind are the tools with which Hildegard constructs her allegorical visions, and the ultimate aim is always moral improvement on the individual level and spiritual renewal on the collective level. In studying the connection between Hildegard’s literary form and her ideas about language and knowledge, I want to open up new perspectives for the study of the books of visions. For too long, old dichotomies in the field of medieval allegorical hermeneutics have stood in the way of gaining a complete picture of Hildegard’s intellectual range. Scholars have connected Hildegard’s visionary use of metaphorical language to biblical hermeneutics, to Chartrian Neoplatonist philosophy, and to mystical theology. These connections are logical and enrich our view of Hildegard’s work. However, I take issue with the way in which they are viewed as evident while excluding other vantage points. Most importantly, the visual element and the idea of the vision as image have been overemphasized, to the detriment of the verbal element and the role of words in allegory. Therefore, my own investigation will focus on language, on the visions not as images but as words. This focus on language will entail taking a fresh look at the amalgam of scattered statements that together give a picture of Hildegard’s thinking on allegorical hermeneutics. I will argue in Chap. 5 that what appears as a hermeneutics of double signification rather amounts to a theory or set of theories on perception, the mind, and cognition. In Hildegard’s models of cognition, developed over the course of several decades, the central role of words becomes ever more important. Moreover, the structure of cognition turns out to be not only essentially verbal but allegorical.  Mews, “Hildegard and the Schools,” 104.

45

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Linking Allegorical Form to Allegorical Theory Considering this conjunction between the structure of language, reality, cognition, and allegory, the question for me is whether we can draw a link to Hildegard’s innovative form of visionary allegory in her prophetic texts. To answer this question, I will read Hildegard’s allegorical literary form in the light of these theoretical writings, which are themselves embedded within the allegorical and visionary frame of the books of visions. My approach seeks inspiration from the movement in literary studies that has been termed new formalism. Rather than a theory or method, new formalism is defined as a movement that brings together those scholars who wish to restate the value of formalist criticism for dominant practices of contextualist and materialist reading.46 Their concern is with the impoverishment of research and pedagogy when literary theory is viewed as a continuation of paradigms in which each new paradigm rejects the old one. New formalists accept the criticism that old Formalism tended to regard form as “the product of a historically disinterested, internally coherent aesthetics.”47 Their renewed formalism thinks of form in relation to history and culture: “a text’s formal features, its aesthetics, in close conjunction with cultural context, convey a politically and historically significant literary experience that is both intentional and affective.”48 Caroline Levine goes further and defines form in such a way that it encompasses both literary and cultural forms: Form, in my definition, refers to shaping patterns, to identifiable interlacings of repetitions and differences, to dense networks of structuring principles and categories. It is conceptual and abstract, generalizing and ­transhistorical. 46  Or, at least, this characterises the ‘activist’ side of new formalism. Marjorie Levinson distinguishes between an ‘activist’ and a ‘normative’ new formalism, “between (a) those who want to restore to today’s reductive reinscription of historical reading its original focus on form (traced by these critics to sources foundational for materialist critiques—e.g., Hegel, Marx, Freud, Adorno, Althusser, Jameson) and (b) those who campaign to bring back a sharp demarcation between history and art, discourse and literature, with form (regarded as the condition of aesthetic experience as traced to Kant—i.e., disinterested, autotelic, playful, pleasurable, consensus-generating, and therefore both individually liberating and conducive to affective social cohesion) the prerogative of art. In short, we have a new formalism that makes a continuum with new historicism and a backlash new formalism.” Marjorie Levinson, “What is new formalism?,” PMLA 122, no. 2 (2007): 559. 47  Wolfson, 2. 48  Theile, 14.

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But it is neither apolitical nor ahistorical. It does not fix or reduce every pattern to the same. Nor is it confined to the literary text, to the canon, or to the aesthetic. It does involve a kind of close reading, a careful attention to the ways that historical texts, bodies, and institutions are organized—what shapes they take, what models they follow and rework. But it is all about the social: it involves reading particular, historically specific collisions among generalizing political, cultural, and social forms.49

Levine calls this kind of close reading strategic formalism. One other aspect of it is that, contrary to the practice of Jameson, Foucault, and New Historicist critics influenced by Foucault, literary forms do not have to coherently refer to a social context. They can also “participate in a destabilizing relation to social formations, often colliding with social hierarchies rather than reflecting or foreshadowing them.”50 In conclusion, when literary forms are studied together with philosophical ideas and other social and cultural formations, the relations between them are an object of study in themselves: rather than one-directional and simple, they are ambiguous, indexical or distorting, harmonious or conflicting. The study of them requires that we abolish the usual opposition of “politics vs. aesthetics, history vs. form, contextuality vs. intertextuality, cross-cultural vs. cross-textual inquiries.”51 In her classic overview article of the study of allegory, Christel Meier voiced a similar insight.52 She warned that we must not suppose, when so much of our attention goes to integumental discourses and the theory of texts, that this theory is in agreement with literary practice. Rather, we must examine their relation to each other in each individual text. In order to grasp these interactions, I will use modern literary theory on allegory to define allegory formally (albeit in a very flexible way) in Chap. 2, also in its relationship to allegoresis, and to define the ways in which allegorical discourses and conceptions of language may help shape particular allegorical forms. Thus, heeding Meier’s warning, I will not apply medieval terminology and theory directly to the formal characteristics of the allegorical visions. Rather, I will look for possible 49  Caroline Levine, “Strategic Formalism: toward a new method in cultural studies,” Victorian Studies 48, no. 4 (2006): 632. See also the more recent book Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). 50  “Strategic Formalism: toward a new method in cultural studies,” 626. 51  Theile, 6. 52  Meier, “Überlegungen”.

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intermediaries, larger frameworks such as conceptions about language, texts, and Scripture, that inform the practice of allegorical writing. Frank Bezner did not extend his investigation of hermeneutical discourse to allegorical form, but his study suggests that if allegorical hermeneutics are used to think about how linguistic forms enable or obstruct knowledge, then the form of allegory could become an object of epistemological scrutiny as well. I imagine this as a possibility but not a necessity. Writing allegory could just be a matter of adopting known literary models, while writing about allegory would be a separate business with its own discussions, unrelated to the practice. It does not matter, in that case, what form allegory takes, as long as it can be generally conceptualised as veiled truth. However, I will argue that, in Hildegard’s case, the literary form of allegory becomes a philosophical problem in itself, and this theorising is reflected in the literary form of the allegory she writes. Let me give one example of an interesting convergence between theoretical priorities and formal appearance, in Bernard Silvester’s Cosmographia. Frank Bezner has pointed out how, in the two commentaries ascribed to Bernard on Vergil and Martianus Capella, integumental exegesis is carried out through semantic analysis.53 Bernard’s take on allegorical exegesis, at a closer look, seems very different from the Macrobian model. Like William of Conches, Bernard does not think that some kinds of texts essentially require allegorical integumenta, but rather that integumenta are part of a specific communicational situation catering to a specific public. For Bernard, the philosopher’s task is to decode allegorical meaning through a semantic analysis. The philosopher must make clear distinctions between different meanings (“distinctiones”) and determine precisely what reference words have. In his commentary on the Aeneid, Bernard says: “One must remember in this book as well as in other allegorical works that there are equivocations and multiple significations, and therefore one must interpret poetic fictions in diverse ways.”54 The philosopher must study how integumental fictions work through the analysis of linguistic form and meaning. Now, if we look at the Cosmographia, the interesting thing is that very little of it is actually allegorical. Only Bernard’s use of personifications is. 53  Bezner, Vela veritatis: Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der Intellectual History des 12. Jahrhunderts, 354. 54  Bernard Silvester, Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil’s Aeneid (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 11.

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But personification is a special case of allegory, because a personification announces its identity through its name and does not require a semantic transfer. If a character named Love appears in a text, she is allegorical because she is a living character and an abstract concept at the same time. However, the allegory in this case is exceptionally explicit, because it works with a noun that becomes a name. Given the lack of need for semantic transfer, Bernard’s text is not integumental at all, because there is nothing to ‘uncover.’ It would seem that Bernard does not just adopt allegorical forms because they suit his philosophical concepts, but that he is wary of allegory as that which means something else than it says, because language has to be clear and distinct. The one form he uses—personification—is the one that clearly says what it means. The twelfth-century rationalisation of the sciences was a quest for the right form of philosophical enquiry. Philosophers wondered whether integumental allegorical language is a method that can communicate truth, or a hoax. They asked themselves whether rhetorical language is a necessary preliminary, an inevitable hurdle, or something that can be filtered out of philosophical discourse. The question is whether this preoccupation with philosophical form entails a new engagement with allegorical form. I will argue that this is indeed the case for Hildegard. She does not merely adopt allegorical and exegetical forms sanctioned by tradition but adapts them for the sake of their theoretical justification. The allegory of the visions has long been recognised as a literary form essential to the status of the text and to the worldview and theology that it propounds. By reading the allegory in Hildegard of Bingen’s books of visions as a complex form of allegory deserving thorough analysis and contextualisation, I want to enrich the view of twelfth-century Latin allegory as being a matter of a few great (Chartrian) allegories, self-conscious in their literary and philosophical goals, next to minor, didactic, allegories with only tradition behind them. Hildegard is not involved with the schools but a monastic author. She explicitly rejects rhetoric and with that also a great deal of allegorical hermeneutics. She denies the literary character of her work, and introduces herself not as a theologian but as a prophet. Her allegories present themselves not as human inventions but as given by God. Whereas the allegorical interpretation of classical, secular, texts is of prime importance to the Chartrians, Hildegard’s work is modelled on the form and theory of biblical exegesis. I am interested in the ways this strange allegory with its extraordinary claims asserts itself in a knowledge economy that was rapidly and fundamentally changing.

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The first two chapters of the book are introductory. Chapter 1 describes the formal characteristics of the allegory and allegoresis in the three books of visions. It also zooms in on some oppositions that come to the fore in scholarship on the visions, namely visuality versus textuality, allegory and allegoresis, incomprehensibility versus explanation, and symbol versus allegory. Chapter 2 delves deeper into the theoretical background to these oppositions, in medieval allegorical theory but mostly in modern theory. The aim of this chapter is also to define some abiding characteristics of literary allegory and the way in which these interact with ideas and theories about language, Scripture, and allegory. The two chapters that follow apply this theory to an in-depth analysis of Hildegard’s allegorical and exegetical methods. Chapter 3 approaches the exegetical method via an indirect route: it studies the exegesis used by the magistra in her homilies on the Gospels in order to shed new light on the visionary allegoresis. I believe the homilies try to engage with the biblical text in the same symbiotic way in which the allegory and its allegoresis function in the books of visions, although the symbiosis is not complete because it has to work with the biblical text as it is. Thus, I approach the exegetical method and its quest for coherence and significant correspondences from the perspective of where it comes into contact or conflict with other principles. I continue this approach in Chap. 4, where I analyse occurrences in the books of visions where the relation between allegory and allegoresis meets its limits. This happens in parables, where the exegetical method conflicts with the demands of narrative, in the allegories of the cosmos, where I describe a methodological change from Scivias to Liber Divinorum Operum, and in the last visions of each book, where the (approaching) end of time disintegrates the exegetical method. The last three chapters relate these formal characteristics and methodological strategies of the visions to clusters of ideas in the vision books. Chapter 5 describes how Hildegard develops a theory about words and their function in cognition in interaction with allegorical discourses, metaphors, and theory. I suggest that we can situate the allegorical visions and their use of figural language in this cognitive framework. Chapter 6 shows how this frame extends to discussions of revelation in history and the role of the prophet. I read Hildegard’s statements about her own visionary gifts and her prophetic awakening in the light of the cognitive focus analysed in the previous chapter. Lastly, Chap. 7 builds on all the other

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chapters and offers some perspectives for relating these clusters of allegorical and exegetical form, method, and theory to large conceptual changes in twelfth-century biblical exegesis and the question of theological language.

References Bernard Silvester. 1979. Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil’s Aeneid. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bezner, Frank. 2001. Latet omne verum? Mittelalterliche ’Literatur’-Theorie interpretieren. In Text und Kultur: Mittelalterliche Literatur, 1150–1450, ed. Ursula Peters, 575–611. Stuttgart: Metzler. ———. 2002. Omnes excludendi sunt praeter domesticos: Eine mittelalterliche Reflexion über die sozialen und kommunikativen Bedingungen des Wissens. In Ars und Scientia im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit: Ergebnisse interdisziplinärer Forschung, ed. Cora Dietl and Dörte Helschinger, 57–77. Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke Verlag. ———. 2005. Vela veritatis: Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der Intellectual History des 12. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 85. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ———. 2007. Figmenta animi oder der ‘Denkraum des Fiktiven’: Zur Entkopplung von Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit bei Peter Abailard. In Impulse und Resonanzen, ed. Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Cora Dietl, Annette Gerok-Reiter, Christoph Huber, and Paul Sappler, 19–33. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. ———. 2013. Iam non opus est figuris: Konzeptualisierung und Literarisierung des Figuralen bei Peter Abaelard. In In Figura: Dynamiken der Zeiten und Zeichen im Mittelalter, ed. Christian Kiening and Katharina Mertens Fleury. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Bogdanos, Theodore. 1977. ‘The Shepherd of Hermas’ and the Development of Medieval Visionary Allegory. Viator 8: 33. Brück, Anton Philipp. 1979. Hildegard von Bingen, 1179–1979: Festschrift zum 800. Todestag der Heiligen. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte. Colish, Marcia L. 1988. Systematic Theology and Theological Renewal in the Twelfth Century. The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (2): 135–156. Copeland, Rita, and Peter T.  Struck, ed. 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Curtius, Ernst Robert. 1973. Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Bern: Francke.

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Deploige, Jeroen. 1998. In nomine femineo indocta: kennisprofiel en ideologie van Hildegard van Bingen (1098–1179). Hilversum: Verloren. ———. 2004. The Priest, the Prophet, and the Magician: Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu vs Hildegard of Bingen. In The Voice of Silence: Women’s Literacy in a Men’s Church, Medieval Church Studies, ed. Thérèse de Hemptinne and María Eugenia Góngora, vol. 9, 3–22. Brepols. Derolez, Albert. 1998. The Manuscript Transmission of Hildegard of Bingen’s Writings: The State of the Problem. In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke, 17–28. London: Warburg Institute. Dronke, Peter. 1974. Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism. Leiden: Brill. ———. 1992. A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems. In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett, 1–16. London: Warburg Institute. ———. The Symbolical Cities of Hildegard of Bingen. The Journal of Medieval Latin 1: 168–183. Embach, Michael. 2003. Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen. Studien zu ihrer Überlieferung und Rezeption im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit. Erudiri Sapientia 6. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Felix, Heinzer. 2014. Unequal Twins: Visionary Attitude and Monastic Culture in Elisabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra Stoudt, and George Ferzoco, 85–108. Leiden: Brill. Flanagan, Sabina. 1998. Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179: A Visionary Life. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Gussem, Jeroen de, and Dinah Wouters. 2019. Language and Thought in Hildegard of Bingen’s Visionary Trilogy: Close and Distant Readings of a Thinker’s Development. Parergon 36 (1): 31–60. Haverkamp, Alfred. 2000. Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld. In Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld. Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongreß zum 900jährigen Jubiläum, ed. Alfred Haverkamp. Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern. Haverkamp, Alfred, Tenxwind von Andernach und Hildegard von Bingen. 1997. Zwei ‘Weltanschauungen’ in der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts. In Verfassung, Kultur, Lebensform. Beiträge zur italienischen, deutschen und jüdischen Geschichte im europäischen Mittelalter, ed. Alfred Haverkamp, Friedhelm Burgard, Alfred Heit, and Michael Matheus, 321–360. Trier: Philipp von Zabern.

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Hildegard of Bingen. 1978. Scivias. Edited by Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 43. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. n.d. Riesenkodex, MS 2. Hochschul- und Landesbibliothek RheinMain. Jean, Leclercq. 1991. Naming the Theologies of the Early Twelfth Century. Mediaeval Studies 53: 327–336. Liebeschütz, Hans. 1930. Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen. Leipzig: BG Teubner. Marenbon, John. 2000. Review: Humanism, Scholasticism, and the School of Chartres. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 6 (4): 569–577. Meier, Christel. 1976. Überlegungen zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Allegorie-­ Forschung. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mischformen. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10: 1–69. ———. 1979. Zwei Modelle von Allegorie im 12. Jahrhundert: Das allegorische Verfahren Hildegards von Bingen und Alans von Lille. In Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug, 70–89. Stuttgart: Metzler. ———. 1985. Eriugena im Nonnenkloster? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Prophetentum und Werkgestalt in den figmenta prophetica Hildegards von Bingen. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 19: 466–497. Mews, Constant. 1998. Hildegard and the Schools. In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke, 89–110. London: The Warburg Institute. ———. 2007. Scholastic Theology in a Monastic Milieu in the Twelfth Century: The Case of Admont. In Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany, ed. Alison Beach, 217–239. Turnhout: Brepols. Mews, Constant J. 2014. Hildegard of Bingen and the Hirsau Reform in Germany 1080–1180. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra L. Stoudt, and George Ferzoco, 57–83. Brill. Berndt, Rainer, ed. 2001. Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Schröder, Jochen. 2001. Die Formen der Ezechielrezeption in den Visionsschriften Hildegards von Bingen. In Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst, ed. Rainer Berndt, 343–374. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Southern, Richard. 1982. The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres. In Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert Louis Benson, 113–137. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. ———. 1997. Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe. Vol. 1: Foundations. Oxford: Blackwell. Stock, Brian. 1972. Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stover, Justin A. 2013. Hildegard, the Schools, and Their Critics. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Kienzle, George Ferzoco, and Debra Stoudt, 109–135. Leiden: Brill.

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Strubel, Armand. 2002. ‘Grant senefiance a’: allégorie et littéraure au Moyen Age. Paris: Champion. Sweeney, Eileen. 1993. Rewriting the Narrative of Scripture: Twelfth-Century Debates over Reason and Theological Form. Medieval Philosophy and Theology 3: 1–34. Theodoric of Echternach. 1993. Vita sanctae Hildegardis. Edited by M.  Klaes-­ Hachmöller. Turnhout: Brepols. Wetherbee, Winthrop. 1972. Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Whitman, Jon. 1987. Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2003. Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

CHAPTER 2

Vision and Explanation

Vision and Explanation I began the introduction by citing the prologue to Scivias. Now let us look at the first vision of that book. I will quote the opening passage of the vision at length: VIDI QVASI montem magnum ferreum colorem habentem, et super ipsum quendam tantae claritatis sedentem, ut claritas ipsius uisum meum reuerberaret, de quo ab utraque parte sui lenis umbra uelut ala mirae latitudinis et longitudinis extendebatur. Et ante ipsum ad radicem eiusdem montis quaedam imago undique plena oculis stabat, cuius nullam humanam formam prae ipsis oculis discernere ualebam, et ante istam imago alia puerilis aetatis, pallida tunica sed albis calceamentis induta, super cuius caput tanta claritas de eodem super montem ipsum sedente descendit ut faciem eius intueri non possem. Sed ab eodem qui super montem illum sedebat multae uiuentes scintillae exierunt, quae easdem imagines magna suauitate circumuolabant. In ipso autem monte quasi plurimae fenestellae uidebantur, in quibus uelut capita hominum quaedam pallida et quaedam alba apparuerunt. I have seen something like a large mountain of an iron colour. On it was seated someone of such a great clarity, that his clarity shook my sight. From both sides of him a light shadow extended, like a wing of wonderful width and length. And in front of him, at the foot of this mountain, there stood a figure which was everywhere full of eyes. Except for these eyes, I could not

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5_2

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discern in it any human form. And in front of this figure was another figure, someone of a young age, clothed in a pale dress but with white shoes. So much clarity descended on her head from the one seated on the mountain that I could not look at her face. But from him who sat on the mountain came many living sparks, which flew around these figures with great sweetness. In the mountain itself, there were many little windows, in which the heads of people appeared, some pale and some white.1

For most readers within a certain cultural context, this text would be easily recognisable as allegory. I will provisionally define literary allegory for now as instances where a text systematically and simultaneously produces two coherent strings of meaning, before going into more theoretical depth in the following chapter. Saying that we recognise this text as allegorical, however, is not the same as saying that the text can easily be read as allegory. We find an incitement to interpret allegorically, but the allegory still appears incoherent. It might be possible to decipher a few elements, but not to construct two coherent lines of reference. That is why the text itself offers an exegesis after the full description of the allegory. There, every element of the allegory receives its corresponding interpretation. Each vision pairs wondrous images with a precise explanation. The incomprehensibility of the images paired with the systematicity of the explanation gives the visions a different character from both the visions of old-­ testament prophets and the personification allegories of contemporary philosophers. Hans Liebeschütz’ book on the subject, Das allegorische Weltbild der Heiligen Hildegard von Bingen, connects the form of the books of visions to their theological orientation. He calls the visions “a theology in images”: instead of dialectically analysing that which goes beyond the senses, or remaining mystically silent about it, the visions represent the non-sensible through a carefully described image.2 Even though the visions remind of biblical prophecy books, they are much more systematic, in two respects. First, there is a strict separation between what Hildegard sees and what she hears, or between Hildegard’s voice and that of God.3 Hildegard does not 1  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), chap. I,1,1. 2  Hans Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Leipzig: BG Teubner, 1930), 12. 3  Liebeschütz, 48; Dinah Wouters, “Envisioning Divine Didactics: Didactic Strategies in the Visionary Trilogy of Hildegard of Bingen,” Sacris Erudiri 54 (2015): 235–63.

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need to ask questions, and exchange between the two voices is rare. Second, when God’s voice gives an explanation, his commentary follows the order of the visionary image’s description, repeating and explaining every single element. The allegorical images, often personifications or allegorical buildings, are formally akin to the contemporary allegorical poetry of the schools.4 But the difference, says Liebeschütz, is that the visionary wants to be taken more seriously than the poets. Her images must be a fitting expression of theological doctrine.5 The form of the allegory reflects this theological orientation and seriousness of intent. Image and spiritual meaning run in parallel. “Hildegard’s work is thus characterised by the juxtaposition of a random, sometimes fantastic abundance of ideas in individual observations and a comprehensive order in its totality.”6 The imaginative disarray of the allegory comes about because the allegory looks towards its explanation in the allegoresis, which provides an understanding of the logic that determines the allegory. For this reason, Liebeschütz concludes that the allegory of Hildegard is not related to other twelfth-century allegorical poetry, which was inspired by late antique personification allegory. Rather, he finds the impulse for this kind of allegory in the allegorical-exegetical method developed by patristic exegesis. Allegoresis made it possible to lift the elements of a biblical text out of their context and assemble them in new configurations. The vision texts make use of this possibility to create their allegories. Building on Liebeschütz, Christel Meier expands the comparison between Hildegard’s allegory and Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus.7 She likewise notes how differently both allegories are framed: Alan positions himself as a poet practising his art, whereas Hildegard radically rejects any influence of the liberal arts in her prologue to Scivias. Nevertheless, their allegories are both formally allegorical and thematically spiritual. Moreover, they use the same formal elements, such as personifications and allegorical space and architecture. Although there are important differences, they do  Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen, 28.  Liebeschütz, 30. 6  Liebeschütz, 28. “So ist das Werk der Hildegard charakterisiert durch das Nebeneinander von regelloser, manchmal phantastische Gedankenfülle in der Einzelbetrachtung und umfassender Ordnung im ganzen.” 7  Christel Meier, “Zwei Modelle von Allegorie im 12. Jahrhundert: Das allegorische Verfahren Hildegards von Bingen und Alans von Lille,” in Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 70–89. 4 5

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not rest on the opposition between allegory and allegoresis or secular and religious. Rather, there is a difference in the manner of composition of allegory and allegoresis. In Alan’s text, personifications, landscape, architecture, and action follow epic conventions, and not all of these epic elements have to be allegorically significant. In Hildegard’s text, on the contrary, every single element carries allegorical significance. This results in personifications which are not completely human but, for instance, half building or half invisible, in allegorical landscapes that consists of only a few floating spatial elements, in allegorical architecture that is uninhabitable, and in allegorical action that at most consists of a few movements. “The composition in space and the linkage in time is kept incontinuous, logically comprehensible consistency is largely avoided.”8 Meier concludes that the allegories of Alan and Hildegard do not fundamentally differ, but rather that both authors have created fitting forms for different contents and intentions.9

The Function of the Allegory The combination of allegory and explanation in the visions mirrors the relation of biblical text to exegetical commentary. This premise explains both the systematicity of the explanation and the incoherence of the allegory, which is created with an eye to its explanation. But what function does the allegory serve in this combination? Does it do more than point forward to its explanation? Christel Meier has offered the hypothesis that the incomprehensibility of the allegory is exactly its function.10 The combination of disparate elements in a composition creates the impression of something surprising and miraculous: Assemblage of what does not belong together, discontinuity and incoherence are the principles of an organisation that invokes the quality of the miraculous (mirabilia haec) through the use of the unpredictable, the surprising, the strange and the obscure in the images.11 8  Meier, 78. “Die Zusammenstellung im Raum und die Verknüpfung in der Zeit wird inkontingent gehalten, logisch einsehbare Konsequenz weitgehend vermieden.” 9  Meier, 83. 10  Meier, “Zwei Modelle.” 11  Meier, 78. “Zusammenfügung des Nicht-Zusammengehörigen, Diskontinuität und Inkohärenz sind die Prinzipien einer Organisation, die mit dem Einsatz des Unvorhersehbaren, überraschenden, Fremden und Dunklen der Bilder die Qualität des Wunderbaren (mirabilia haec) erzeugt.”

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In contrast to the world experienced with the senses and reason, so Meier claims, in the allegory irrationality reigns supreme.12 This brings with it the necessity of adding an allegoresis to the allegory, and of keeping the two completely separate, so as to allow no contact between the irrational, literal level and the rational, spiritual level.13 Only from the level of interpretation does the incoherent attain contingency and meaningfulness.14 What could be the function of this kind of organisation? According to Meier, the aim is to destroy the reader’s certainties. The hermetic inaccessibility of the literal level, initially presented in isolation, conveys to the reader their absolute inability to grasp things on their own and thus their total dependence on an authorised interpretation.15 Not being able to interpret for themselves, readers are forced to accept unconditionally what they cannot understand by means of human rationality.16 What Meier’s hypothesis does not account for is the systematic link between the allegory and its exegesis. This problem is addressed by the similar but subtler analysis by Maura Zátonyi. Zátonyi’s book Vidi et intellexi from 2012 asks the question why Hildegard uses this specific combination of allegory and allegoresis.17 Zátonyi regards the visions not only as similar to but as a form of Bible commentary. Reacting against new practices of biblical exegesis that distance themselves from the biblical text in favour of discussing philosophical problems, Hildegard advocates the Bible’s imaginative way of speaking by replicating it. Thus, the visionary’s own commentary on the Bible takes the form of visions, and instead of trying to explain the biblical text in more precise words, it comments on the text in the same kind of metaphorical language. She constructs new images out of known biblical ones: instead of translating the allegory of the Bible into the language of philosophy and theology, Hildegard translates images into new images.18 Zátonyi regards the visions as a meta-­ commentary on the Bible. By replicating biblical language, Hildegard asserts that this sort of language in images is in fact the only way of speaking about the transcendent.  Meier, 78.  Maura Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi: die Schrifthermeneutik in der Visionstrilogie Hildegards von Bingen (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012). 14  Meier, “Zwei Modelle,” 78. 15  Meier, 81. 16  Meier, 81. 17  Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi. 18  Zátonyi, 319. 12 13

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For Zátonyi, the effect of the allegory is not meant to be complete bewilderment but rather a temporary alienation from familiar knowledge. She views “Bildverfremdung” as the hermeneutical principle behind the visions.19 Something familiar becomes alienated, creating something new and strange. The familiar, in this case, is the biblical tradition.20 While interpreting, the reader appropriates this strangeness by linking it anew to what is known and familiar. The result is to see Scripture with new eyes. Whereas Meier claims that the allegory only communicates the insight that one cannot know anything and is therefore dependent on the exegesis, Zátonyi gives a more nuanced view, in which the allegory is only at first incomprehensible but then becomes more clear and less strange as it is paired with exegesis. Both of these analyses, however, accord to the allegory above all an emotive function: it invokes feelings of awe, mystery, or alienation. The allegoresis conveys meaning, whereas the allegory only conveys impressions and emotions. I would connect this to another tendency of scholarship on Hildegard, namely that of viewing the allegory above all as an ensemble of images, contrary to the allegoresis, which exists of mere words. The process of allegoresis is then described as a putting into words: “series of images and pictorial details are explained point by point, as moral or spiritual meanings are assigned to them.”21 Victoria Cirlot compares Hildegard to the surrealist painter Max Ernst in that both are trying to “set images free.”22 Cirlot argues, like Meier, that the visions give access to a sacred reality that the senses cannot apprehend but that one must reach through meditation and interiorisation.23 In an interesting analysis, Cirlot discusses Ernst’s collage as an artistic procedure similar to Hildegard’s.24 Collage brings together encyclopaedic knowledge in new and surprising combinations, through which new ways of viewing become possible. In Max Ernst’s vision as in Hildegard’s, she claims, the combination of disparate visual elements leads to the apprehension of a different reality.  Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi.  Zátonyi, 275. 21  Peter Dronke, “The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 3. 22  Victoria Cirlot, Hildegard von Bingen y La Tradición Visionaria de Occidente (Barcelona: Herder, 2005), 117 (in pdf, digital edition). 23  Cirlot, 118. 24  Cirlot, 118–35. 19 20

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María Eugenia Góngora, too, claims the “primacy of vision over audition” in the allegorical visions. As “open images,” the visions “can be considered the meeting place of both visible and invisible realities and in this sense the visionary image (textual and iconographic) necessarily includes all its possible meanings […].”25 For Góngora, the strength of the allegory is exactly that it does not suggest an interpretation. On the contrary, the visionary images “are open to the imagination and the contemplation of its readers,” who are invited to complete the image with their own mental images.26 Further, this visual approach to the allegory often goes hand in hand with a conflation of the allegorical image with the miniature.27 For instance, Cirlot visualises the allegory by means of the miniature.28 Góngora, too, analyses the textual and iconographic vision together as interchangeable representations. Richard Emmerson goes further and attributes epistemological primacy to the miniatures: “This study will therefore treat the miniatures as informed and informative visual representations of Hildegard’s visionary experience. They are primary representations of what Hildegard saw, which precede in time and, I will argue, in importance the transcriptions of the Voice from Heaven that offer comment on her visions throughout Scivias.”29 Emmerson argues that the miniatures represent a more direct form of interpretation of the raw visionary experience. In conclusion, as a structurally incomplete allegory, which only signals that it needs but does not suggest its own interpretation, the allegorical 25  María Eugenia Góngora, “Seeing and Knowing, Reading and Imagining in the Liber Divinorum Operum of Hildegard of Bingen,” in Speaking to the Eye: Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650), ed. Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 58. 26  Góngora, 59. 27  I will not go further into the debate over the role of the miniatures in the books of visions. We can indeed suppose that the miniatures of the Wiesbaden Codex, which was made during Hildegard’s lifetime, are closely related to the text. See especially the following works: Madeline Caviness, “Hildegard as Designer of the Illustrations to Her Works,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 29–62; Madeline Caviness, “Artist: To See, Hear, and Know, All at Once,” in Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 110–24; Lieselotte SaurmaJeltsch, Die Miniaturen im ‘Liber Scivias’ der Hildegard von Bingen: die Wucht der Vision und die Ordnung der Bilder (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998). 28  Cirlot, Hildegard von Bingen y La Tradición Visionaria de Occidente, 52. 29  Richard K.  Emmerson, “The Representation of Antichrist in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias: Image, Word, Commentary, and Visionary Experience,” Gesta, 2002, 96.

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vision is regarded by scholars as a visual image which conjures emotions of humility or alienation, or which incites the reader to a play of the imagination. In Meier’s account, the function of the incomprehensible allegory is to point out to readers their inability to understand what is beyond them. On the contrary, Cirlot and Góngora regard the allegory as offering the possibility of endless and open interpretation, a play in which imaginations meet. I want to go with Zátonyi’s middle road, where allegory and exegesis keep each other in balance. I think it is important to consider how the allegory interacts with its exegesis. In doing so, I want to return to the allegory as a structure of words. I do not deny the visual and imaginative power of the visions, nor do I reject their emotive value. I want to suggest, however, that before we can analyse these more speculative workings of the allegory as image and experience, we must return to the basic level of the actual words of the allegory and how they function in interpretation.

The Formal Interplay of Allegory and Allegoresis Therefore, let us go back to the first vision of Scivias and read the allegory together with its exegesis. How does the addition of the exegesis enable our reading of the vision as an allegory? First of all, although the vision is introduced by “et vidi,” there is actually not that much to see. If the vision should be imaginatively pictured, how does one imagine “someone” (“quendam”) whose only characteristic is great clarity? Or how must one picture “a figure” (“quaedam imago”) whose only human quality are eyes all over a body that does not exist, as it is said that the figure has no other human form besides the many eyes? Or a figure of whom Hildegard cannot see the face, although she describes its appearance as youthful? In fact, Hildegard herself most of the time is not able to see much of this vision, because of the great clarity which strikes her sight. Turning to the exegesis, not for clarification but rather to dim the light so we can discern something more, we hear the voice of the one sitting on the throne proclaiming in a loud voice: O homo, quae fragilis es de puluere terrae et cinis de cinere, clama et dic de introitu incorruptae saluationis, quatenus hi erudiantur qui medullam litterarum uidentes eam nec dicere nec praedicare uolunt, quia tepidi et hebetes ad conseruandam iustitiam Dei sunt, quibus clausuram mysticorum resera quam ipsi timidi in abscondito agro sine fructu celant.

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O human, you who are fragile from the dust of the earth and ashes from ashes, cry out and speak about entering imperishable salvation, so that the people would be made wiser who see the marrow of the texts but do not want to speak or preach about it, because they are tepid and languid in preserving the justice of God. For them, open up the lock of the mysteries that they timidly hide in a hidden field without fruit.30

In each vision, the first words spoken by the heavenly voice communicate the general message and theme. In this particular case, the first words are a call on Hildegard to educate the clergy, those who understand the divine message of Scripture but refuse to speak of it to others. By referring to the goal of Hildegard’s mission (“quatenus hi erudiantur”), the first words of the vision indicate that the vision programmatically talks about Scivias itself. Then follows the exegesis of the first sentence: Vnde etiam, ut uides, mons iste magnus ferreum colorem habens designat fortitudinem et stabilitatem aeternitatis regni Dei, quae nullo impulsu labentis mutabilitatis potest exterminari, et super ipsum quidam tantae claritatis sedens, ut claritas ipsius uisum tuum reuerberet, ostendit in regno beatitudinis ipsum qui in fulgore indeficientis serenitatis toti orbi terrarum imperans superna diuinitate humanis mentibus incomprehensibilis est. As you see, this large mountain of an iron colour designates the strength and the stability of the eternity of the kingdom of God, which the impact of no shift or change can destroy. On it is seated someone of such great clarity, that his clarity shakes your sight: this shows Him who is in the kingdom of beatitude, ruling over the whole world in the splendour of unfailing serenity, and who is, in his heavenly divinity, incomprehensible to human minds.31

The mountain designates the strength and stability of the eternal kingdom of God, and the one who is seated on it shows God, who reigns over the world but is incomprehensible to human minds. This incomprehensibility is allegorically represented as Hildegard’s inability to see. Similarly, the figure full of eyes stands for the fear of God (“timor Domini”), which always looks to God.32 It has no other human characteristic apart from the eyes because, being constantly intent upon the divine, it finds no time for human weakness and looking-away. The third figure, young and in white,  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, chap. I,1.  Hildegard of Bingen, chap. I,1,1. 32  Hildegard of Bingen, chap. I,1,2. 30 31

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is interpreted as the poor in spirit, who according to Matthew will inherit the kingdom of God.33 The head of this figure is invisible because “it cannot be grasped by mortal and infirm thoughts” as to how much this virtue is worth, considering that God himself subjugated himself to poverty.34 Why do these two virtues appear at the beginning of Scivias?35 “Timor Domini” is the first of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, as found in Isaiah.36 These gifts begin with the fear of the Lord and lead to wisdom, as it is also said in the Psalms: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.”37 Augustine, in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, links the seven Gifts to the seven Beatitudes, thereby equating “timor Dei” and “beati pauperes spiritu”: “The fear of the lord belongs to the humble, of whom it is said here: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit […].’”38 In De doctrina christiana, he sums up the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as the virtues one must practise in order to be a good exegete.39 Because fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom, it is also the prerequisite for good exegetical practice. So, when we find “timor domini” and “pauperes spiritu” together, we know that these indicate the first step towards wisdom and towards salvation. Following Augustine, these must also be the first steps in the art of interpretation. The short first vision of Scivias, then, programmatically announces the goal of the whole book. It also imposes the right attitude for reading the book and for interpreting 33  Matthew 5,3: “Beati pauperes spiritu: quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum.”/ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 34  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, chap. I,1,3. 35  Cf., Christel Meier, “Eriugena im Nonnenkloster? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Prophetentum und Werkgestalt in den figmenta prophetica Hildegards von Bingen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 19 (1985): 477–78. 36  Isaiah 11, 2–3: “Et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini: spiritus sapientiæ et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiæ et pietatis; et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini.”/“The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.” 37  Psalms 111, 10. 38  Augustine, Sancti Aurelii Augustini de sermone Domini in monte libros duos, CCSL 35 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), chap. I,11. 39  Augustine, De doctrina christiana (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), chap. II,7,9–11. Cf., a paraphrase of this in Raban Maur, De institutione clericorum, vol. 61, Fontes Christiani (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 61; Meier, “Eriugena im Nonnekloster,” 178. Christel Meier sees a link with Rupert of Deutz’ Liber de divinis officiis VIII, where he too combines the Gifts and the Beatitudes, in the context of an exegesis of the Holy Week.

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the vision. The reader must begin interpretation with a humble mind, knowing that this will lead to wisdom and beatitude. By reading the exegesis, we understand that the allegorical part of the vision shows what its exegesis says about the conditions that underlie knowledge. The visuality of the vision itself is a metaphor for the condition of knowing: what is not seen cannot be known. Inversely, what can be seen can be known. Knowledge is possible, be it only partially. I think it is not to be underestimated that right at the beginning of the book the seeing of the vision is equated with knowing. Contrary to Meier’s claim that the allegorical part of the vision leads to the realisation that this image cannot be understood, the exegesis affirms that knowledge is possible through the allegorical vision. However, the reader must also be humble, because knowledge is not just up for the taking. I interpret this double attitude towards the allegory as implying that the allegory gives knowledge, but not without the allegoresis. This means that the two work together and illuminate each other, instead of following in a sequence of incomprehension and comprehension. Continuing, I want to look at this interaction on a deeper level, namely that of form. What is the formal link between the allegory and the allegoresis, the common structure that enables the transfer of meaning? Is there a formal link, or should we follow common opinion in holding that the allegoresis imposes structure on the free and unobstructed flow of the allegory? Let us read again the allegoresis of the first sentence of the vision. The mountain, which is large and has the colour of iron, designates the strength and the stability of the eternity of the kingdom of God. Notice how every element of this exegesis corresponds to an individual element of the allegory. The mountain is large just as divine eternity is strong, and it has the colour of iron because iron is stable just like eternity. On this mountain (“et super ipsum”)—which is, high above, in heavenly beatitude (“in regno beatitudinis”)—the person who shines (“quidam tantae claritatis”) denotes God, who, metaphorically, never lacks clarity (“qui in fulgore indeficientis serenitatis”). Being seated there (“sedens”), metaphorically reigning as a king over the world (“toti orbi terrarium imperans”), his clarity strikes Hildegard’s eyesight, because he is incomprehensible to human minds. These correspondences are schematised in Table 2.1. Most correspondences are based on simple metaphors: “above” in place stands for “above” in existential status, visual clarity indicates the state of divine clearness, and so on. The allegory does not only provide the metaphors, but seems to accommodate the allegoresis. Note how the

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Table 2.1  Part of the Allegoresis of Scivias I,1,1 (Allegory Left, Allegoresis Right) Mons iste magnus ferreum colorem habens et super ipsum quidam tantae claritatis sedens ut claritas ipsius uisum tuum reuerberet

aeternitatis regni Dei fortitudinem et stabilitatem in regno beatitudinis ipsum qui in fulgore indeficientis serenitatis toti orbi terrarium imperans superna diuinitate humanis mentibus incomprehensibilis est

properties of the mountain are highlighted that make it refer to the eternity of the kingdom of God. There is no direct metaphorical link between the mountain and eternity. The syntax of the allegoresis makes clear that the transposition happens by means of the adjectives that the allegorical description provides: the mountain does not directly indicate the eternity of the kingdom of God; rather, its height and iron colour indicate the strength and the stability of that eternal kingdom. The allegory also anticipates the allegoresis when it describes the mountain as having the colour of iron, because it is not the colour that ensures the metaphorical reference, but “iron,” as that which the colour reminds of. Eternity is not metaphorically the colour of iron but metaphorically iron. The allegory’s visual elements thus anticipate the verbal exegesis. Let me also give a few examples from the other two books of visions. Since I want to demonstrate a method that is largely common to every part of the books, the choice of vision is less important, and I will continue by analysing a sentence from the first vision of each book. In Liber vite meritorum, the first personification that appears in the book is a human figure, black and naked, hugging a tree and picking flowers (see Table 2.2).40 What might appear to us an idyllic picture of bohemian bliss rather stands for the vice that is “love of the world” (“amor seculi”). The allegoresis teaches us that the human form indicates that this vice is completely entangled in carnal desires and that she is black because she possesses nor desires any clarity.41 She is naked because she lacks the clothes of beatitude. She embraces a tree (the strength of vainglory) with both arms 40  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, CCCM 90 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), chap. I. 41  Hildegard of Bingen, chap. I,67.

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Table 2.2  Part of the Allegoresis of Liber Vite Meritorum I,76 Nuda quoque stans (standing naked) brachiis ac cruribus suis (with her arms and legs) arborem (the tree) sub ramis eius (under its branches) circumdat (she embraces)

nulla indumenta beatitudinis habens (lacking the clothes of beatitude) in operibus et in uestigiis suis (in her deeds and her tracks) fortitudinem uane glorie (the strength of vainglory) aliis quibusdam uitiis uelut quibusdam ramis ab illa procedentibus obtecta (covered with other sins as with some branches that grow from this sin) comprehendit (she takes hold of)

(her deeds) and legs (her tracks), while branches (other vices that sprout from her) cover her. The flowers that grow on these branches are vanities, which she collects with her arms, to indicate that with her deeds she attracts all the vanities of the world. This example offers other kinds of allegorical relations. For instance, the link between “arms” and “deeds” is metonymic. Further, the tree hides a reference to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (“vane glorie”), although the tree is not equated with vainglory but linked to it via its characteristic of strength. Lastly, the branches of the tree are not linked to the vices as a metaphor but as a simile. This might be the case because the web of relations is rather complex: Amor Saeculi stands underneath the tree to which are attached the branches that simultaneously cover her and grow out of her as if she were the tree. Lastly, in Liber divinorum operum, this system is applied even more strictly (see Table 2.3). In the first vision, we see a figure similar to that in Scivias, a human figure with a face that shines brighter than the sun.42 The allegoresis tells us that this is Caritas (Love). Caritas’ head is crowned by a broad circle, which is interpreted as the Catholic faith spread out over the whole world. The circle has a golden colour (“aurei coloris”), which is interpreted as the rise of the faith “at the first dawn of splendid light” (“in prima aurora eximii fulgoris”). Here, again, a colour is linked to something carrying that colour (the dawn), which itself metaphorically refers to something else (creation). Creation, however, is not mentioned as such: there is no direct reference between gold and creation. What is shown is  Hildegard of Bingen, chap. I,1.

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Table 2.3  Part of the Allegoresis of Liber Divinorum Operum I,1,4 (1) Et circulus amplus (And a broad circle) aureique coloris (of a golden colour) caput eiusdem faciei (the head of that face) circumdat (embraces)

fides catholica per totum orbem terrarum diffusa (the catholic faith spread out over the whole world) in prima aurora eximii fulgoris surgens (at the first dawn of splendid light) excellentiam largitatis uere caritatis (the superiority of the abundance of real love) omni deuotione complectitur (embraces with complete devotion)

how metaphorical reference works: how gold can signify creation through sharing its colour with the dawn. Continuing, the head surrounded by the golden circle is interpreted through its characteristic of being the highest and most noble part of the body: therefore, it signifies “the superiority of the abundance of real love,” the face having already been interpreted as Caritas. The sentence that follows is remarkable for its rigorous application of the exegetical method to the finest details. “In that circle”—“the faithful,” which are “in” the circle of the faith—“above that head”—excelling even the highest position of the head, therefore “transcending everything”— “another face […] appears”—“the goodness of divinity” takes pity on the faithful—a face that is “like that of an old man”—old, that is, metaphorically, eternal: “sine inicio et fine.” Notice how the allegorical syntax is followed meticulously by the exegetical syntax and how even prepositions are exegeted. Later in the sentence, we have the exegesis of “mentum et barba” as “disponendo et protegendo,” I suppose because the chin as a pars pro toto can give orders (“disponendo”) by nodding and a beard protects (“protegendo”) the face. Table  2.4 shows how remarkably strictly each element is transposed in the exegesis. In sum, there is a strong formal link between the allegory and the allegoresis, which is not unidirectional, that is, an imposition of structure by the allegoresis onto the allegory, but which also runs in the other direction, as an adoption of a certain structure by the allegory that enables the exegetical method to work perfectly. This formal link appears as a structure of one-to-one correspondences between the single words or phrases of the allegory and the allegoresis.

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Table 2.4  Part of the Allegoresis of Liber Divinorum Operum I,1,4 (2) in eodem circulo (in that same circle) supra idem caput (above that head) alia facies (another face) uelut senioris uiri (like the face of an old man) apparet (appears) ita ut eiusdem faciei (so that from that face) mentum et barba (the chin and the beard) uerticem (the top) capitis huius (of that head) tangat (touches)

fidelibus (the faithful) omnia excellens (transcending everything) benignitas diuinitatis (the goodness of divinity) qui sine inicio et fine est (which is without beginning and and) succurrit (helps) diuinitas (divinity) disponendo et protegendo omnia (by giving orders and protecting everything) celsitudinem (the height) summe caritatis (of the highest love) obtinet (reaches)

Allegory and Symbol At the beginning of this chapter, I highlighted a tendency in scholarship to describe Hildegard’s allegory and allegoresis by way of some evaluative oppositions: creative versus reductive, literary versus theological, imaginative versus conventional. This opposition finds its most powerful guise in the contrast of symbol and allegory. Maura Zátonyi claims that the visions are not allegory at all. According to her, to call the text allegory, seen in opposition to metaphor, would be to deny both the integrity of the image and the effect of alienation and surprise that it evokes. Zátonyi does concede that the allegoresis applies “the method of allegory.”43 In this respect, she says, researchers have been right to label the visions as allegory. However, the discursive, allegorical, exegesis cuts up the allegory into single images and is only able to grasp part of the visionary image. It cannot refer to the visionary image as a whole.44 The relation of the composition as a whole to the whole of the explanation is rather what Zátonyi calls a metaphoric structure. This structure consists in a tension that connects two elements from different areas, a tension that the allegorical interpretation cannot resolve.45  Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 280.  Zátonyi, 281. 45  Zátonyi, 281. 43 44

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What is the difference between allegory and metaphor for Zátonyi? She restricts her discussion of metaphors to their cognitive value as devices of estrangement, which put the old in a new light. She applies this to the visionary allegory, which is then alienating not only because of the strange compositions but also because of the innovative use of metaphor. She says: The metaphor, insofar as it is transmission, contains within itself the dynamic aspect and precisely through this the element of surprise as well as the effect of strangeness. This fact explains the uniqueness of Hildegard’s visions. They are difficult to ascribe to a tradition, they fit neither the mystical tradition nor the commentary literature.46

Zátonyi argues that the unique experience that is the power of metaphor could never be captured by the allegoresis dissecting and translating the visions. My objection is that most metaphors that Hildegard uses are conventional and not innovative, which undermines the claim that Hildegard’s visions cannot be allegory because their imagery is too innovative. As my analysis has just shown, Hildegard mostly works with the most basic metaphorical meanings in language. In short, Zátonyi refuses to label the visionary image as allegory because of its close relation to its allegoresis. She concludes that the vision should not be called allegory, because an allegory would dissolve into allegoresis, whereas metaphor would not. The individual images can be paraphrased and interpreted allegorically, but these interpretations do not exhaust the wholeness of the interpretation contained in the composed vision image.47 Zátonyi objects to the action that allegoresis performs upon the vision, namely the way it divides the image into separate elements and then explains the metaphors of which it consists. It is ironic that Zátonyi should make this kind of analysis, because the strongest aspect of her book is that it attempts to evaluate positively the interplay between allegory and allegoresis. She emphasises throughout the book that the allegoresis does not replace the allegory. Yet, in the end, she does return to a negative view of allegoresis where the systematicity and rigour of the explanation suppresses the integrity and ineffable power of the allegory. 46  Zátonyi, 311–12. “Die Metapher, insofern sie Übertragung ist, enthält in sich den dynamischen Aspekt und gerade dadurch das Überraschungsmoment sowie den Effekt der Fremdheit. Diese Tatsache erklärt die Einzigartigkeit der Visionen Hildegards. Sie lassen sich schwer in eine Tradition einordnen, sie passen weder in die mystische Tradition, noch in die Kommentarliteratur.” 47  Zátonyi, 308.

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Fragmentation versus unity, translation of meaning versus indissoluble otherness: it is not difficult to see how Zátonyi’s contrast between allegory and metaphor harkens back to the age-old opposition that is often also expressed as that between allegory and symbol. The next chapter will treat this problem in depth, but, for now, I will exemplify the stance by quoting Marie-Dominique Chenu, who deplores medieval writers’ tendency to “turn metaphor into allegory”: Whereas the metaphor or parable develops an image that, by its dissimilar resemblance, and thus according to its whole, introduces us to the intelligence of the spiritual reality thus represented, the allegory is the analytical description of an idea from the fragmented and abstract elements of an image, of which each detail takes on meaning.48

According to Chenu, allegory is the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of the power of metaphor as an image. He finds the Arc of Noah as a whole a beautiful spiritual image, but regrets that when Hugh of Saint Victor explains every single element of it, its symbolic power evanesces into didacticism.49 The symbol inheres in the image’s intensity and aesthetic value, whereas allegory extracts abstract ideas from the image and “exploits” this aesthetic operation for didactic gain. “In the end, the explication submerges the signification.”50 My book wants to continue the project that Zátonyi’s book began: to show the fruitful interaction between allegory and allegoresis. By focusing on the interaction between them, I do not deny the allegorical vision’s aesthetic and spiritual potential as an integral image. However, when one traces form and function of the allegory, it is not the vision’s integrity as an image that comes to the fore but rather the way in which it is segmented and put through a process of translation. Similarly, by emphasising that the allegory represents the way language works in cognition, I do not want to detract from the effect of surprise and estrangement produced by the composition. However, as my concern is with form and method, I rather want 48  Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1976), 188. “Alors que dans la métaphore ou la parabole, on développe une image qui, par sa ressemblance dissemblable, et donc selon son ensemble, nous introduise à l’intelligence de la réalité spirituelle ainsi figurée, l’allégorie est la description analytique d’une idée à partir des éléments morcelés et abstraits d’une image, dont chaque détail prend signification.” 49  Chenu, 189. 50  Chenu, 190. “A la limite, l’explication a submergé la signification.”

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to highlight the recognisability of exegetical method, the conventionality of the metaphors, and the iterability of the process. In my opinion, the largest part of the estrangement evoked by the visions is due to the way in which known methods are crystallised and pushed to the extreme. Christel Meier has written that medieval symbolics is a field of mysteries, but no mysterious field: the methodology of interpretation “represents a rationally explained, teachable and learnable procedure.”51 My aim is to show that Hildegard makes use of these rational, teachable, and learnable practices in order to write a visionary allegory that satisfies the highest criteria of rationality. To view the allegory in this light, we have to slightly shift our viewpoint and take into account the allegoresis as an integral part of how the allegory functions. The allegoresis complements the allegory and, in doing so, stabilises its projection of meaning. It bridges the void between an allegory’s implicit structure and the accomplished reading of an allegory’s structure. This does not necessarily mean that the allegoresis replaces the allegory with its explicit interpretation. Rather, the combination of the two illustrates the mental process of interpretation and the medium rather than the result of knowledge. The next chapter focuses on two theoretical entanglements within the theory of allegory: the confusion between allegory and allegorical interpretation, and that between formal and ideological definitions of allegory. The rest of the book aims to situate Hildegard’s allegorical form, in its interaction with allegoresis, within the context of her own writings and ideas, and within the context of twelfth-century hermeneutics, exegesis, theology, and philosophy. I argue that the allegorical form of the visions reflects changing forms of knowledge in all of these domains, but also that it is an expression of Hildegard’s unique self-positioning as a visionary prophet and theologian.

References Augustine. 1967. Sancti Aurelii Augustini de sermone Domini in monte libros duos. Edited by Almut Mutzenbecher. CCSL 35. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1995. De doctrina christiana. Edited by Roger P.H.  Green. Oxford: Clarendon. Caviness, Madeline. 1998a. Artist: To See, Hear, and Know, All at Once. In Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. Barbara Newman, 110–124. Berkeley: University of California Press.

51  Christel Meier, “Das Problem der Qualitätenallegorese,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974): 385. “stellt ein rational erklärtes, lehr-und lernbares Verfahren dar.”

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———. 1998b. Hildegard as Designer of the Illustrations to Her Works. In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett, 29–62. London: Warburg Institute. Chenu, Marie-Dominique. 1976. La théologie au douzième siècle. Paris: Vrin. Cirlot, Victoria. 2005. Hildegard von Bingen y La Tradición Visionaria de Occidente. Barcelona: Herder. Dronke, Peter. 1998. The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems. In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett, 1–16. London: Warburg Institute. Emmerson, Richard K. 2002. The Representation of Antichrist in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias: Image, Word, Commentary, and Visionary Experience. Gesta: 95–110. Góngora, María Eugenia. 2013. Seeing and Knowing, Reading and Imagining in the Liber Divinorum Operum of Hildegard of Bingen. In Speaking to the Eye : Sight and Insight through Text and Image (1150–1650), ed. Thérèse de Hemptinne, Veerle Fraeters, and María Eugenia Góngora, 49–63. Turnhout: Brepols. Hildegard of Bingen. 1978. Scivias. Edited by Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 43. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1995. Liber vite meritorum. Edited by Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 90. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1996. Liber divinorum operum. Edited by Peter Dronke and Albert Derolez. CCCM 92. Turnhout: Brepols. Liebeschütz, Hans. 1930. Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen. Leipzig: BG Teubner. Meier, Christel. 1974. Das Problem der Qualitätenallegorese. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 8: 385–435. ———. 1979. Zwei Modelle von Allegorie im 12. Jahrhundert: Das allegorische Verfahren Hildegards von Bingen und Alans von Lille. In Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug, 70–89. Stuttgart: Metzler. ———. 1985. Eriugena im Nonnenkloster? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Prophetentum und Werkgestalt in den figmenta prophetica Hildegards von Bingen. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 19: 466–497. Raban, Maur. 2006. De institutione clericorum. Edited by Detlev Zimpel. Fontes Christiani. Vol. 61. Turnhout: Brepols. Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte. 1998. Die Miniaturen im ‘Liber Scivias’ der Hildegard von Bingen: die Wucht der Vision und die Ordnung der Bilder. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Wouters, Dinah. 2015. Envisioning Divine Didactics: Didactic Strategies in the Visionary Trilogy of Hildegard of Bingen. Sacris Erudiri 54: 235–263. Zátonyi, Maura. 2012. Vidi et intellexi: die Schrifthermeneutik in der Visionstrilogie Hildegards von Bingen. Münster: Aschendorff.

CHAPTER 3

Allegory as Form and Concept

The previous chapter demonstrated the structural interplay between allegory and allegoresis in the visions: the interpretation not only explains but also influences the form of the allegory. This poses a difficulty for modern readers. The close connection between the two in Hildegard’s text produces a feeling of unease with what to us feels like a paradox between the uniqueness of prophetic visions and the systematic nature of the exegesis. In this chapter, I will explore the historical and theoretical reasons underlying these tensions. I will try to peel apart two pairs of entangled concepts: first, allegory and allegoresis, and, second, allegory as a form and as a concept. The two pairs are closely related: the fact that allegory is so often confused with allegoresis is a major complicating factor in the effort to define the formal characteristics of literary allegory as they interact with theoretical concepts of allegory. An allegorical text tries to predict, impose, and incorporate its own interpretation: it chooses its words so that they are strongly suggestive of more than one layer of meaning. For this reason, allegory has rarely been absent from discussions that centre on the intricacies of meaning and interpretation. Its centrality in these discussions, however, has had the effect of obscuring allegory as a formal construct. Whereas the first-­ century rhetorician Quintilian could simply define the figure as an extended metaphor, allegory later became a carrier of divine revelation,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5_3

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prefiguration, and intertextual connection, signifying either the hope that meaning can be stable and transcendent or the impossibility of such hopes. Describing allegory in formal terms alone is difficult. Quintilian’s definition of allegory as a continued metaphor has never really been up to the task. Other definitions, which speak of two levels of meaning, raise many questions: Are these two levels formally present in the text; how are they produced by the words on the page; how can we distinguish allegorical texts from non-allegorical texts; and is such a distinction possible? An allegorical text is preoccupied with prescribing or at least hinting at its own deeper meaning. But where is this meaning produced? Historically, allegory has been made to carry so many cultural values and so much conceptual weight that any formal distinctions and markers have sunk beneath view. Scholars have reacted against attempts to theorise allegory as an abiding, transhistorical form by insisting that allegorical texts be read with theoretical tools taken from their historical context. The editors of the Cambridge Companion to Allegory state that “[t]he definition of allegory is found in understanding its history.”1 That is: the definition of allegory is found in its many occurrences and not in a generalising definition, suggesting that the definition of allegory is its history and that allegory is a shapeshifter without a stable core. In that case, if in need of a definition, we must work with the terms and theories that were historically used. Unfortunately, allegorical theory and practice are often so much at odds with each other that Jesse Gellrich claims we would understand medieval allegorical texts much better “if only we could learn to read them in opposition to the allegorical theory they inherited.”2 A major reason for this incompatibility is that allegorical theory has only recently taken up the aim of defining allegorical texts. Allegorical theories have been about canonical texts, cultural hegemony, the nature of rhetoric, and the purpose of philosophy, to name just a few things, but they have never been particularly invested in analysing the allegories of literature. For instance, much of what passes for medieval allegorical theory is not interested in describing actual allegorical writings but is preoccupied with allegorical exegesis and the authoritative texts that it can disclose by means of this method. 1   Rita Copeland and Peter T.  Struck, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1. 2  Jesse M.  Gellrich, “Allegory and Materiality: Medieval Foundations of the Modern Debate,” The Germanic Review 77, no. 2 (2002): 157.

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My aim is to arrive at a broad formal concept of allegory that is still able to take into account its intricate interactions with allegorical theories and discourses. Before engaging, in later chapters, with specific medieval allegorical discourses and theories, I want to use modern theories of allegory to affirm that there is an abiding quality in the literary mode of allegory, although it is a malleable and diffuse quality. This has two valuable implications. First, it enables us to distinguish the literary mode of allegory from that of allegoresis. Second, it enables us to study how philosophical, literary, hermeneutic, and exegetical theories and discourses shape and interact with specific forms of allegory but do not determine them. This will help me in later chapters to chart the interactions between specific allegorical forms in Hildegard’s writings and the theoretical matter that surrounds them.

Distinguishing Between Allegory and Allegoresis At the core of the problem is the habit of discussing allegories by using the terms and theories of allegoresis. This is what Maureen Quilligan objected to in her groundbreaking book on how to read allegorical texts. She says that by not making the distinction between the genres of allegory and allegoresis, scholars “settle for an imprecision in our critical terminology so acute that we will remain incapable of understanding and delighting in the finest achievements of generic, narrative allegory.”3 Quilligan states that allegories do not need allegoresis. An allegorical text is able to indicate its own meaning to the reader without the help of an external commentary.4 In the words of Gerald Bruns: “The allegorical text preempts interpretation by inscribing itself with its own commentary; it is, redundantly, self-allegorizing.”5 Conversely, allegorical interpretation, developed as a way of imposing meaning on texts that were originally not allegorical, does not describe the structure of actual allegorical narratives and therefore cannot be used to speak about allegorical texts.6 Quilligan’s view seems aimed at a revaluation of allegory at the cost of devaluing allegoresis. However, it leaves the door open for a revaluation of 3  Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre (Cornell University Press, 1992), 20. 4  Quilligan, 31. 5  Gerald L.  Bruns, “The Hermeneutics of Allegory and the History of Interpretation,” Comparative Literature 40, no. 4 (1988): 385. 6  Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, 31.

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allegoresis as well. At the end of her book, Quilligan suggests that allegory and allegoresis work in similar ways: in periods susceptible to their linguistic play, “allegorical criticism and allegorical narrative will both appear, the one focusing on the manipulations the reader can make with a text and the other creating a text designed to manipulate the reader.”7 By removing the hierarchy in which allegoresis is the tool for reading allegory (and not a literary genre in itself) and in which allegory must play according to the rules set out by allegoresis (thus marking it as a predictable and uncreative genre), we are able to put them next to each other as creative literary forms. Both of them engage with the process of interpretation, but from a different angle. Apart from giving the literary analysis of allegories a new critical basis, the merit of Quilligan’s book is that it distinguishes allegory and allegoresis not by picturing them as opposites or complements, but as genres of writing that work in similar ways but are not dependent on each other. Prejudiced Distinctions in Modern Theory Attempts to distinguish between allegory and allegoresis have in the past suffered from the desire to make this distinction a stand-in for broader cultural and literary-aesthetic divisions. Christel Meier’s overview article on the state of the research excellently described the situation in 1976.8 She showed there how scholars wanting to distinguish between allegoresis and allegory often rather take aim at the distinction between allegory in the religious or theological sphere and allegory that belongs to the secular and the literary sphere. Meier quotes, for instance, C.S.  Lewis in The Allegory of Love: “[…] my subject is secular and creative allegory, not religious and exegetical allegory.”9 Edgar de Bruyne, writing a decade after Lewis, marked the opposition with the terms “spiritualization” and

 Quilligan, 281.  Christel Meier, “Überlegungen zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Allegorie-Forschung. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mischformen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10 (1976): 1–69. Meier discusses three thematic oppositions that are used to define the distinction allegory—allegoresis: (1) religious and secular or theological and literary; (2) historical and ahistorical or real and abstract; (3) hermeneutics and illustration. My discussion revises these three oppositions, with the first structuring the last two. 9  Meier, 25; C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936). 7 8

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“matérialisation.”10 The first is the proper activity of theologians, who make spiritual what is material by searching for spiritual meaning in the world and in history, while the second belongs to the poets, who make material what is spiritual by clothing ideas in material form.11 Heinz Jantsch even introduced a middle term in order to separate strictly theological allegoresis from poetic allegory: “Allegorese” is biblical exegesis, “Allegorie” is poetry, and the intermediate domain of “Allegoristik” contains everything that refuses to fit into the first two categories.12 Jauss, on the contrary, described allegory as developing out of allegoresis. He formulated this development of allegorical poetry out of biblical exegesis in terms of “fortschreitende Verweltlichung und Literarisierung” (“progressive secularization and literarisation”).13 The opposition between the “allegory of the poets” and the “allegory of the theologians” is characterised through further oppositions. In particular, poetic allegory is associated with creativity and the production of literature. Another set of terms is that of rhetorical versus hermeneutical allegory.14 When creativity is positively valued, this entails the contrast of the presumed spontaneity and originality of allegory versus the conventionality of allegoresis.15 Rosemond Tuve, for instance, called allegoresis “imposed allegory,” an impropriety against which she defined true allegory.16 Carolynn van Dyke, too, called it “a method of suppressing meaning.”17 In contrast, when creativity is negatively valued, it gets called subjective and arbitrary, in contrast to the presumed objectivity of allegoresis.18 10  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 44; Edgar De Bruyne, Etudes d’esthétique médiévale, vol. 2 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1946). 11  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 44. 12  Meier, 41; Heinz Jantsch, Studien zum Symbolischen in frühmittelhochdeutscher Literatur (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1959). 13  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 28; Hans Robert Jauss, “Entstehung und Strukturwandel der allegorischen Dichtung,” in Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, ed. Hans Robert Jauss and Erich Köhler, vol. 6.1 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1968), 146–244. 14  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 48; Walter Blank, Die deutsche Minneallegorie: Gestaltung und Funktion einer spätmittelalterlichen Dichtungsform (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1970); Ulrich Krewitt, Metapher und tropische Rede in der Auffassung des Mittelalters (Ratingen, Kastellaun, Wuppertal: Henn Verlag, 1971). 15  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 45. 16  Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and Their Posterity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). 17  Carolynn Van Dyke, The Fiction of Truth: Structures of Meaning in Narrative and Dramatic Allegory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 45. 18  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 45–47.

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These same aesthetic judgements also appear in distinctions within allegoresis itself, namely the opposition between biblical exegesis and so-­ called integumental allegoresis.19 I must note, however, that when these distinctions occur within the concept of allegoresis itself, they do not so much refer to the kind of allegoresis that is practised as to the texts to which the exegesis is applied. For instance, the term integumentum is found in some medieval theories on allegory. It refers to the idea that a narrative can serve as a veil that hides knowledge of a more fundamental kind. Modern theory again takes up the term in order to imply an essential difference between texts that read the Bible as an allegory and texts that read other texts as allegories without the theological underpinnings established in the service of biblical exegesis. In contrast to biblical exegesis, integumental allegoresis is then valued for its creativity and its literariness. It is situated in the “sphere of medieval writing in which the abstract and the concrete, ideas and images, are inextricably conjoined.”20 Thus, the opposition between theological and literary that characterised the difference between allegoresis and allegory is replicated within allegoresis itself. These distinctions seem aimed at circumscribing and claiming a certain part of the allegorical for literature while setting it against what is mere interpretation and convention. The distinction is not in itself incorrect, but the theoretical status that has been claimed for integumentum as a medieval concept has often obscured the actual uses of it. Conversely, sometimes biblical exegesis is celebrated in opposition to integumental allegoresis. Scholars then elevate biblical exegesis above what is mere literature. This is what the concept of typology enables. Although typology exists in medieval theory, it was made into a solid system only by twentieth-century scholars originally projecting their own discussions onto the much more diverse past. As with integumentum, the rigidity of the concept has gradually been softened to make place for a 19  Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Involucrum. Le mythe selon les théologiens médiévaux,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 22 (1955): 75–79; Édouard Jeauneau, “L’usage de la notion d’integumentum à travers les gloses de Guillaume de Conches,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 24 (1957): 35–100; Hennig Brinkmann, “Verhüllung (‘Integumentum’) als literarische Darstellungsform im Mittelalter,” in Der Begriff der repraesentatio im Mittelalter, ed. Albert Zimmerman (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), 314–39; Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 1974); Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1976). 20  Dronke, Fabula, 1.

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more nuanced view. As Meier notes, the concept of typology plays out the oppositions of historical versus ahistorical on the one hand and concrete versus abstract on the other.21 The concept was used to express the view that, in contrast to the arbitrary allegoresis of non-biblical texts, the exegesis of the Bible is rooted in salvation history, which is historical, concrete, and anything but arbitrary. In the 1930s, both philologists and theologians put forth this claim independently of each other. In literature, Erich Auerbach’s famous “Figura” essay stressed the distinction between Jewish typological and Greek allegorical allegoresis.22 Typology is the prophetic foreshadowing of concrete historical facts by other concrete historical facts. Auerbach claimed that it should be strictly separated from allegorical exegesis, which interprets biblical elements in a spiritual or ethical manner.23 However, Auerbach equates allegoresis, the allegorical kind of exegesis, with allegory, the allegorical forms in art and literature. He makes the case against allegoresis by using examples from allegory, saying, “Such are the allegories of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, extending roughly from the Psychomachia of Prudentius to Alain de Lille and the Roman de la Rose.”24 Thus, even in the core domain of biblical exegesis we find again the opposition between pure exegesis, now defined as historical, and other, literary, exegesis that is closely associated, if not equated, with allegorical literature. Auerbach himself offers some arguments against the strict separation of both. For instance, he notes the fact that the word figura was commonly used to denote all and not just biblical allegory. Moreover, he notes that two of the three commonly accepted figural senses of the Bible were not typological and points out that Tertullian might be the only author in whose work pure typology can be found. Nevertheless, Auerbach asserts that typology and the wish “to preserve the full historicity of the Scriptures along with the deeper meaning” was the dominant exegetical form in the West.25 In theology, both Protestant (notably von Rad and Goppelt) and Catholic (notably Daniélou and the ‘Nouvelle Théologie’) scholars followed a similar course.26 Their aim was to find an acceptable, because  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 34.  Erich Auerbach, “Figura,” in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, ed. Ralph Mannheim (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 11–76. 23  Auerbach, 36. 24  Auerbach, 54. 25  Auerbach, 34,37, 36. 26  Meier, “Überlegungen,” 36. 21 22

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historical, basis for biblical spiritual exegesis. In order to do this, they again posited exegesis against ‘the allegorical,’ defined as arbitrary and excessively literary. Early on, however, other scholars nuanced these views. Henri de Lubac argued in his Exégèse médiévale that the strict opposition of typological and allegorical exegesis underestimates the profound complexity of medieval exegesis.27 He cancels the opposition by subsuming all four levels of exegesis under the typological idea of historical instances that foreshadow each other. The critical difference is that these instances are not narrowly defined as concrete facts but as elements of salvation history. For instance, the allegorical sense is rooted in history not only when it links one fact or person to another but also when it refers to Christ or the Church, because these are instantiated in history. For the same reason, the tropological and anagogical sense can be subsumed under this broad concept of typology as well. Consequently, the demarcation between historical and ahistorical is pushed back again to where biblical exegesis differs from non-biblical exegesis. The terms that de Lubac uses for this old distinction are allegoria facti and allegoria dicti or verbi: the first refers to the events in salvation history recounted by the biblical narrative, whereas the second is the kind of allegory that can be found in any text.28 Since the work of de Lubac, more and more scholars have nuanced the typological view, and the consensus has grown that typology cannot be separated from allegory in medieval practice nor in medieval theory. They have pointed out that there is no specific terminology for typology,29 that typological relations are found outside of Scripture, namely in the realm of nature,30 and that typology is structurally similar to allegorical exegesis.31 27  Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’écriture (Paris: Aubier, 1959); Susan Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1998). 28  de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, IV.125–149; Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac, 50. 29  Rudolf Suntrup, “Zur sprachlichen Form der Typologie,” in Geistliche Denkformen in der Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Klaus Grubmüller, Klaus Speckenbach, and Ruth SchmidtWiegand (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984), 23–68. 30  Friedrich Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalters,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 58 (1958): 1–23; Friedrich Ohly, “Halbbiblische und außerbiblische Typologie,” in Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung, Darmstadt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977), 361–400. 31   Paul Michel, “Übergangsformen zwischen Typologie und anderen Gestalten des Textbezugs,” in Bildhafte Rede im Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit: Probleme ihrer Legitimation und ihrer Funktion, ed. Wolfgang Harms and Klaus Speckenbach (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992), 43–72.

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Similarly, scholars have questioned the oppositions that constantly recur in allegorical theory—theological versus literary, objective versus subjective, and so on—and that are used to demarcate the difference between allegory and allegoresis, or between biblical and non-biblical allegoresis, or between a Jewish and a Greek strain of biblical exegesis.32 Blurred Distinctions in Medieval Hermeneutics I now turn to medieval theory and terminology in order to point out some elements in the relation between allegoresis and allegory that were important to the twelfth century. The key questions are, first, does medieval theory also distinguish between allegoresis as the allegorical interpretation of texts and allegory as the creation of allegorical texts? Second, does it make a distinction between biblical exegesis and non-biblical exegesis? Third, if these distinctions are there, do they use the same oppositions that twentieth-century theory uses to describe them? Most important for the development of an early medieval hermeneutic theory was the ‘hermeneutic shift’ introduced by Augustine’s De doctrina christiana. This shift refers to the rebranding of the theoretical terminology for grammar and rhetoric as a terminology for scriptural interpretation. Earlier antique traditions of allegory and allegoresis had mostly developed separately: the Stoic philosophical allegoresis of poetry, the rhetorical interpretation and use of allegory as a trope, and the use of allegorical passages in epic poetry.33 Early Christianity assembled these strands of allegorical theory and allegorical practice. Furthermore, it added the exegesis of Scripture as a system of several spiritual senses above the literal one, and a touch of typology.34  Ernst Hellgardt, “Erkenntnistheoretisch-ontologische Probleme uneigentlicher Sprache in Rhetorik und Allegorese,” in Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 29. 33  Jon Whitman, Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 33–44; Dirk Obbink, “Early Greek Allegory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter T.  Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 15–25; Glenn W. Most, “Hellenistic Allegory and Early Imperial Rhetoric,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 26–38. 34  Whitman, Interpretation and Allegory; Gilbert Dahan, “L’allégorie dans l’exégèse chrétienne de la bible au Moyen Age,” in Allégorie des poètes, allégorie des philosophes: Études sur la poétique et l’herméneutique de l’antiquité à la Réforme., ed. Gilbert Dahan and Richard Goulet (Paris: Vrin, 2005), 205–30; Denys Turner, “Allegory in Christian Late Antiquity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71–82. 32

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What Augustine does in De doctrina christiana is to bring all of this together as a unified theory of Christian allegorical exegesis. He recruits the existing terminology of grammar and rhetoric into the service of the emerging theory of biblical interpretation. The work is set up as a rhetorical treatise, but instead of continuing the antique tradition of rhetorical handbooks that teach how to speak and write, it teaches how to read and interpret. Thus, Augustine does not just recruit rhetorical theory in the service of hermeneutics but transforms the rhetorical model into a hermeneutical one. The rhetorical handbook becomes a handbook for reading, and allegorical reading becomes the model for reading in general.35 Rhetorical strategies were transformed into hermeneutical strategies, at many levels.36 To give just one example, ‘invention,’ which used to be the rhetorical set of techniques for producing and developing an argument in speaking—“the most powerful engine of ancient rhetorical theory, the intellectual ‘control room’ for the assessment and production of meaning through language”—became, in Augustine’s treatise, a strategy for discovering truths concealed in Scripture.37 The practice of creating arguments thus became the creative practice of discovering new levels of meaning in a text. In this situation, where rhetoric, poetics (grammar), and hermeneutics had converged to such a degree, both distinctions that were discussed earlier became harder to perceive. The first is the one between allegory and allegoresis: if compositional methods are turned into allegorical reading techniques, where does that leave allegorical composition? The second is the one between biblical and non-biblical allegoresis. The difficulty lay in the reconciliation of allegory as a rhetorical trope with allegory as a sense in Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit. With Paul began the outlining of a theory that reads the scriptural text on two levels: one literal/ historical and the other spiritual/allegorical. The texts of Scripture were read as containing the whole history and fate of humanity. Although its indirect meanings are not situated at the level of the text but beyond it, they must still be read in the text and as a text, by using the rhetorical theory of tropes. This contrast between metaphysics and rhetoric caused serious difficulties for the theory of allegorical meaning. Theology situates 35  Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 47. 36  Copeland and Sluiter, 48. 37  Copeland and Sluiter, 47–48.

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indirect meaning at the level of the referents, or facts, while rhetoric situates it at the level of words. One solution to the problem was to posit two kinds of biblical allegoresis: allegoria in factis and allegoria in verbis. This distinction is often traced back to Augustinian semiotics but is actually not found there. It is true, however, that Augustine’s use of rhetorical terms to refer to both metaphysical and rhetorical practices of indirect meaning gave rise to much of the later confusion.38 For instance, he makes a semiotic distinction between proper signs, of which the only function is to be a sign, and signa translata, or things that do not primarily but sometimes additionally function as signs.39 Translata is the term used in rhetoric to denote figurative meaning, which Augustine employs here despite the fact that he is not talking about words but about things. In the same way, he uses the term allegoria in the rhetorical sense of “tropus ubi ex alio aliud intelligitur,” as well as applying the term to biblical referents.40 Armand Strubel concludes therefore that Augustine discusses the main problems of interpretation without bringing them together in a coherent vision.41 However, there would not necessarily have been a problem for Augustine. As we will see later when discussing his sign theory, the significance of reference lies not in the form of the sign itself, but in the perception of its meaning by the human mind. In this logic, figurative meaning is able to communicate metaphysical or typological meaning without having to be anything other than a figure of speech, for divine meaning is not produced in the text but by the divinely inspired mind. Still, later generations struggled with this conceptual continuity between figurative language and metaphysical reference. One author engaging with this difficulty is Bede, who wrote a rhetorical treatise De schematibus et tropis. The work discusses both figures of speech and biblical symbolism. In this way, as Strubel notes, one moves imperceptibly from rhetoric to hermeneutics.42 Bede’s goal is to demonstrate the 38  Armand Strubel, “’Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis,”’ Poétique, no. 23 (1975): 342–57. 39  Wanda Zemler-Cizewski, “From Metaphor to Theology: Proprium and Translatum in Cicero, Augustine, Eriugena, and Abelard,” Florilegium 13 (1994): 37–52. 40  Augustine, De doctrina christiana (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), I,2,2; Strubel, “‘Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis,’” 346–47. “a trope in which one thing is understood from something else.” 41  Strubel, “‘Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis,’” 347. 42  Strubel, 348.

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superiority of Scripture over other forms of literature. To do this, he distinguishes two kinds of allegory: “Notandum sane quod allegoria aliquando factis, aliquando verbis tantummodo fit.”43 No explanation is given, only the two usual examples: an example of factual allegory is when the two sons of Abraham stand for the two testaments,44 and an example of verbal allegory is when it is said that “a rod shall come forth out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root.”45 Strubel interprets this passage as follows: […] the allegoria in factis occurs between two events (referents), each symbolising within an economy of salvation, linked by a chronological relationship. The allegoria in verbis takes place between a “fiction” (the poetic, metaphorical discourse) and a reality, without any notion of time. The first starts from an essential similarity, willed by God; the other, from a contingent resemblance, the result of human imagination (the “image”).46

Although neither Bede nor Strubel uses the terminology for typology, we clearly recognise the opposition between biblical typology and poetic fiction in Strubel’s interpretation. For Strubel, it is problematic that both of these kinds of allegoresis are subsumed under the rhetorical definition of allegory as a trope, a verbal utterance that means something else than what it says. Even more problematic for him is what Bede does next, when he says that both factual and verbal allegory can give access to all the senses of Scripture, which are “aliquando historicam, aliquando typicam, aliquando tropologicam, id est, moralem rationem, aliquando anagogen, hoc est, sensum ad superiora ducentem.”47 I should note that the “historical” is here not the historical level of meaning, or the events narrated in the 43  Beda Venerabilis, De schematibus et tropis, ed. Calvin Kendall, CCSL 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), 164. “Note, however, that allegory is sometimes manifested by facts and sometimes only by words.” 44  As is claimed by Paul in Galatians 4,26. 45  Beda Venerabilis, De schematibus et tropis, 164–65. Isaiah 11,1. 46  Strubel, “‘Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis,’” 351. “[…] l’allegoria in factis se produit entre deux événements (référents), chacun symbolisant, liés par une relation chronologique, à l’intérieur d’une économie du salut. L’allegoria in verbis a lieu entre une ‘fiction’ (le discours poétique, métaphorique) et une réalité, sans notion de temps. La première part d’une similitude essentielle, voulue par Dieu; l’autre, d’une ressemblance contingente, résultat de l’imagination humaine (l’ ‘image’).” 47  Beda Venerabilis, De schematibus et tropis, 166.

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text, but an allegorical sense, namely when the allegory refers to a historical event. For example, we have such a historical-allegorical sense when the six days of creation refer to the six ages of the world.48 This would therefore be what we would call typological allegory, yet the reference can be either of factual or verbal nature. “Typicam” here is used as meaning “the spiritual sense referring to Christ or the Church”; in other words: the strict allegorical sense.49 This sense, too, can be referred to by either facts or words. Whereas Strubel asserts that the spiritual senses can only properly be found in factual allegory (i.e., historical persons and events), for Bede, references to the spiritual sense can be made through either historical references or figurative language. This is what leads Strubel to exclaim that this is no clear articulation but rather a simple juxtaposition of inherited theories, and that Bede irrevocably jumbles the terminology.50 However, there is a logic to Bede’s theory, even if it does not quite match later ideas of the sacred scriptural sense. We could say that Bede, like Augustine, has a broad perspective on rhetoric and a high regard for the rhetorical potential of words. Although he does make a distinction between reference through narrated events and reference through rhetorical figures, the referential potential of both is the same. The figurative and the historical can both refer to all kinds of spiritual meanings. What Bede tries to do in this text is to claim the superiority of Scripture. However, he does not claim this superiority on the basis of a formal distinction between allegory based on historical facts and allegory based on figurative language. That is a later development in allegorical theory. Rather, for Bede, scriptural allegory is simply superior because it contains so many possibilities for allegorical reading, both through figures of speech and through its historical narrative. The situation changed after the twelfth century. The first clear and systematically elaborated distinction between the figurative and the allegorical in Scripture is attributed to Thomas Aquinas. He makes clear that rhetorical figures are included in the literal sense, which he called the sensus parabolicus. The spiritual senses of Scripture, on the contrary, are not found in the words but only in historical events.51 This fixates the sharp

 Beda Venerabilis, 166.  Beda Venerabilis, 167. 50  Strubel, “‘Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis,’” 352. 51  Strubel, 354–55. 48 49

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distinction between “theological allegory” and “literary trope,”52 which severs rhetoric from hermeneutics in biblical exegesis. Concurrently with the beginning of this separation of biblical exegesis from the rhetorical and literary domain during the twelfth century, we find that the terms involucrum and integumentum are taken up in order to legitimise the allegorical interpretation of non-Christian texts, thereby providing a new space for the hermeneutical claims of rhetoric. Integumental theory in the twelfth century is connected with Abelard and the Chartrians.53 An important theoretical basis is Macrobius’ concept of narratio fabulosa, or those narratives which may be false but which still carry some value, either because of their moral message or because they refer to truth through the garments of untruth.54 The commentary on Martianus Capella attributed by Edouard Jeauneau to Bernard Silvester uses the terms involucrum and integumentum to make the distinction between biblical and non-biblical allegory. In contrast to the later scholastic distinctions that I mentioned, both are treated under figura, or rhetorical figure: Genus figura doctrine est. Figura, autem, est oratio quam inuolucrum dicere solent. Hec autem bipertita est: partimur namque eam in allegoriam et integumentum. Est autem allegoria oratio sub historica narratione uerum et ab exteriori diuersum inuoluens intellectum, ut de lucta Iacob. Integumentum uero est oratio sub fabulosa narratione uerum claudens intellectum, ut de Orpheo. Nam et ibi historia et hic fabula misterium habent occultum, quod alias discutiendum erit. Allegoria quidem diuine pagine, integumentum uero philosophice competit. A [literary] figure is a kind of instruction. Moreover, a figure is a literary discourse which is normally called a mythical covering. It is subdivided into  Turner, “Allegory in Christian Late Antiquity,” 78.  Édouard Jeauneau, “L’usage de la notion d’integumentum”; Brinkmann, “Verhüllung (‘Integumentum’) als literarische Darstellungsform im Mittelalter”; Dronke, Fabula; Frank Bezner, “Figmenta animi oder der ‘Denkraum des Fiktiven’: Zur Entkopplung von Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit bei Peter Abailard,” in Impulse und Resonanzen, ed. Gisela Vollmann-Profe et al. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2007), 19–33; Frank Bezner, “Iam non opus est figuris: Konzeptualisierung und Literarisierung des Figuralen bei Peter Abaelard,” in Figura: Dynamiken der Zeiten und Zeichen im Mittelalter, ed. Christian Kiening and Katharina Mertens Fleury (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013). 54   Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1963), 6. 52 53

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two types, allegoria (theological allegory) and integumentum (philosophical myth). Now an allegory in this sense is a literary work in the form of a historical narrative, enveloping an understanding true and different from external appearance, like the struggle of Jacob. But a philosophical myth is a literary work which encloses its true significance in the form of a fictitious narrative, as in Orpheus. Both the historical and the fictional modes contain a secret mystery which will be discussed elsewhere. In sum, allegory is suitable for Holy Scripture, while myth is suitable for philosophical writing.55

Involucrum here is the general term for the figure of saying something and meaning something else (otherwise called allegoria), which is divided into allegoria for the Bible and integumentum for myth. Brian Stock points out an important difference between this text and its late antique model, Macrobius’ commentary on The Dream of Scipio. The medieval commentary “does not make a division between frivolous and serious allegory but between religious and secular.”56 Interestingly, integumentum works in the same way as allegoria, namely figurally. The latter tells of true things, while the former is a made-up story; yet they both enable real insight. They both function figurally, and they both give access to the truth. This opens up interesting possibilities, considering that Bernard Silvester is a writer of allegory. The narrative of biblical allegory is a revealed one. If allegory is restricted to revelation, then no new allegories can be written. On the contrary, it is always possible to write a new narratio fabulosa. In theory, this opens up the possibility of incorporating into hermeneutic theory the difference between allegory and allegoresis. In practice, that does not happen. Integumental theory justifies the writing of allegories, but in doing so these new allegorical texts are themselves posited as the object of allegorical interpretation. The reason, as we saw, is that the theory of allegoresis is a theory not about actual allegoresis, but about the allegorical nature of the texts that allegoresis interprets. In medieval as in twentieth-century theory, the act of interpreting is often not distinguished from the object of interpretation.

55  Cited in Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton: Princeton university press, 1972), 38. Translation also taken from Stock, 38–39. 56  Stock, 48. 

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Interactions Between Allegoresis and Allegory Only when we are able to make a distinction between allegoresis and allegory that is not based on the prejudiced opposition between creative and conventional, and when we are able to distinguish interpretation from the object of interpretation, can we begin to discuss the interactions between the two literary forms. Allegoresis itself, however, often tries to deny its independence from the text that it interprets. Martin Irvine provides a good analysis of the power struggle at play between an allegorical interpretation and its object text.57 In this power play, the interpreting text tries to hide that it is itself a text by identifying itself with the authoritative object text. He says that allegoresis “speak[s] like the sibyl, merely giving an unmediated voice to a higher controlling truth.”58 Nonetheless, there is no escaping the fact that it is still itself a text and no more semiotically neutral than the text it interprets. Whereas Irvine notes that allegoresis speaks like the sibyl, one could also draw a parallel between the mystifying work of exegesis and the status of the prophet, who claims to be a neutral instrument passing on a sacred message but who is instrumental in composing and shaping that message. Allegoresis has something to gain by appearing to be a part of the allegory, just as the prophet’s authority depends on the apparent effacement of their own voice. Hence, we should see allegoresis’ denial of its own independence rather as a hallmark of the genre, just as the prophet’s self-­ effacement is a characteristic of the prophetic text. Less abstract is Jon Whitman’s analysis of the dynamics between allegory and allegoresis.59 Whitman demonstrates how allegory and allegoresis have historically shared the same philosophical concerns and dealt with them in similar ways. He puts contemporary exegetical and literary allegorical practices next to each other in order to show that they exhibit similar and interacting developments. For instance, there is a tendency in the allegoresis of Antiquity and the High Middle Ages to interpret mythical figures as physical causes. Mirroring this tendency in allegoresis, contemporary allegory tends to embody these physical elements as personifications. Whitman presents Bernard Silvester’s Cosmographia as the place 57  Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 1994), 246. 58  Irvine, 247. 59  Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).

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where allegory and allegoresis eventually converge: “On the one hand, the author is explicating the story of creation. On the other hand, he is conducting that explication by creating an allegorical story in its own right. That is, he acts out his exegesis by the composition of allegorical agents.”60 It is difficult to see why only the Cosmographia would see a convergence of this kind. An allegorical text presupposes specific knowledge that will enable the reader to read the allegory, and it will naturally often derive this knowledge from exegetical texts, because these are the texts that create the kind of links between meanings that are suited for allegory. However, if we leave aside Whitman’s evolutionary model,61 we might derive the valuable insight that allegory and allegoresis are both concerned with producing meaning and might do so in similar and interacting ways. This “reciprocity between textual production and interpretation” is also discussed by Rita Copeland and Stephen Melville.62 In their essay, they choose not to see allegory and allegoresis as either conjoined or opposed, but as involved in a constant tension: “allegory is precisely that which comes into being through its denunciation of, or its acknowledgement of the risk of, mere allegoresis (allegory is not a particular way of meaning, but an attempt to actively acknowledge a certain dynamic of meaning).”63 Both allegory and allegoresis attempt to create an exceptionally strong intertextual bond between texts. However, we call a text allegorical when it does so without resorting to the explicit links that allegoresis makes. Allegory aims for the effect of allegoresis but avoids its method. In other words, allegory is a way of writing that plays with meaning while never fully disclosing how its meaning is produced, while allegoresis is a way of writing that plays out the disclosure of such meaning, thus claiming for itself the power of allegory while never actually becoming allegory itself. In conclusion, it is important to keep allegory and allegoresis separated, because only by viewing them both as textual forms in their own right can we acknowledge that they can be equally creative and play with meaning in similar ways. At the same time, we must keep in mind that, historically, the two concepts have always been intertwined and that this has influenced the way texts have been written. In this, allegory and allegoresis  Whitman, 220–21.  Kathryn L. Lynch, “Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique. Jon Whitman,” Speculum 65, no. 4 (1990): 1081. 62   Rita Copeland and Stephen Melville, “Allegory and Allegoresis, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics,” Exemplaria 3, no. 1 (1991). 63  Copeland and Melville, 183. 60 61

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mirror the faith of some other categories of which they are part or with which they are associated, namely literature and interpretation and rhetoric and hermeneutics. All of these are not exclusive oppositions, but neither can they fall together; rather, as Copeland and Melville suggest, each part of these pairs constitutes itself by not being what the other is, while also using the other as an integral part of one’s own identity.

Allegory as Form: Figurative Language and Levels of Meaning I will now explore formal definitions of allegory and their relation to ideological and theoretical concepts of allegory. As a point of departure, I take Edwin Honig’s characterisation of what makes a text allegorical. Rather than attempt a definition, he provides a summary of what determines the “allegorical quality in a particular work.” He says, “We find the allegorical quality in a twice-told tale written in rhetorical, or figurative, language and expressing a vital belief.”64 In this definition, a structure of double meaning (“a twice-told tale”) depends on both a formal criterion (“rhetorical language”) and the values and conceptions that are connected to the form of allegory (“expressing a vital belief”). I will first discuss the main tropes with which allegory has been identified, before turning to allegory as a set of values and ideas. Metaphor For Angus Fletcher as for Edwin Honig, “allegory says one thing and means another.”65 This goes back to the rhetorical definition of allegory, for instance by Quintilian: “Allegoria, quam inversionem interpretantur, aut aliud verbis, aliud sensu ostendit, aut etiam interim contrarium.”66 As an example, Quintilian quotes Horace’s Ode 1.14, about a ship caught in a storm, which Quintilian interprets as the vicissitudes of civil war. For Quintilian, allegory is no more than the extension of a given metaphor.  Edwin Honig, “Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory,” 1966 1959, 8, 12.  Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 2. 66  Marcus Fabius Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 1971, chap. VIII,6,44. “Allegory, which means inversion, is when the words refer to one thing and the meaning either to something else or even to its contrary.” 64 65

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Metaphor, in turn, is the paradigmatic instance of a trope, or the transformation of the proper significance of a word to a derived significance.67 Metaphor is a deviation of proper usage for the sake of rhetorical effect, and allegory a drawn-out and therefore tedious repetition of this action. Moreover, Quintilian warns not to mix metaphors and not to “begin with a storm and end with a fire or a collapsed building.”68 Here can be seen most clearly the problem that later ages would encounter in using this definition for allegory: almost every allegorical text will go beyond one semantic group of metaphors, and thereby fail to conform to this definition. As a temporary solution, later rhetoricians and theorists who did deal with actual allegorical texts recast ‘continued metaphor’ as the systematic use of metaphors that share a target domain (civil war, e.g.), but not necessarily a source domain (ships and storms, e.g.). But there are other problems as well with defining allegory as a series of metaphors. For one, metaphors seem to work differently in allegory than they do on their own. To clarify this statement, let me return to Quintilian’s rhetorical definition of allegory as extended metaphor and consider Gerhard Kurz’s rephrasing of that definition. In building his definition of allegory on Quintilian, Kurz considers allegory to be a text with two meanings, “eine Andersrede.”69 As a corrective to Quintilian, however, he notes that it is not simply so that allegory says one thing and also, additionally, something else; rather, something else is suggested through what is being said.70 Kurz is concerned with the question of how allegory differs from metaphor and how it announces this difference to the reader. Allegory requires a different way of reading than the use of multiple similar metaphors in a text. But if allegory is continued metaphor, what makes it allegory and not metaphor? Kurz posits that it is possible to think of a continued metaphor that is not allegory but rather a ‘metaphor-isotopy,’ which is a repetition of semantically similar metaphors. The difference with allegory lies in the latter’s connected structure and the extent of the connections between its metaphors. Kurz calls allegory’s structure an “explicit substitution of two  Quintilian, chap. VIII,6,1, VIII,6,14.  Quintilian, chap. VIII,6,44. 69  Gerhard Kurz, Metapher, Allegorie, Symbol, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1982), 31. 70  Gerhard Kurz, “Zu einer Hermeneutik der literarischen Allegorie,” in Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 14. 67 68

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almost systematically elaborated discourses into one.”71 An allegorical text allows two interpretations at once, and this double interpretation is implemented in every relevant element of the text.72 Kurz sees allegory as a method that uses the double reference-structure of metaphor to such a degree that it is no longer a series of metaphors but allegory: continued and continuous metaphor. Because of this continuity, allegory is able to keep up two coherent levels at the same time. That is to say that it can be perfectly read on just the literal level as well. This builds a contrast with how metaphor signals itself in its linguistic surroundings. A metaphor’s presence is indicated by its incongruence with its non-metaphorical surroundings. When a word is to be interpreted as a metaphor, the literal meaning is not active. Allegory, however, can be read both literally and metaphorically at once, but can also be read in the literal sense only. In a metaphor, the literal meaning is a medium through which the metaphorical meaning is produced; in an allegory, double meaning is produced both on the literal and the allegorical level.73 Therefore, an allegory is not recognised through its incongruence within the text but through the incongruence of the text itself, caused by the high demands put upon its structure. The systematic doubling of meaning brings forth the characteristic elements of allegory, such as instances of apparent absurdity, the dominance of a certain action, episodic and paratactic narrative structures, schematic style, or laconicism.74 Pun Some theorists of allegory call into question the definition of allegory as carrying a double meaning on several ‘vertical’ levels. The first general theory of this kind is by Maureen Quilligan.75 Instead of weighing allegory against the structure of metaphor, she opposes the supposed horizontality of allegory against the verticality of allegorical interpretation. The reason why we define allegory as a vertical structure on two levels, she says, is because we read it as allegorical interpretation, which explicitly puts two meanings next to each other and equates them. But, so Quilligan asserts,  Kurz, 16.  Kurz, Metapher, Allegorie, Symbol, 31. 73  Kurz, “Zu einer Hermeneutik der literarischen Allegorie,” 16. 74  Kurz, 17. 75  Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre. 71 72

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this is not how allegory works. Quilligan argues that allegorical meaning is not found by jumping across the steppingstones from ‘what is said’ to ‘what is meant.’ Rather, what is said is what is meant, but different things are meant simultaneously. The “other” named by the term allos in the word “allegory” is not some other hovering above the words of the text, but the possibility of an otherness, a polysemy, inherent in the very words on the page; allegory therefore names the fact that language can signify many things at once. It does not name the many other things language means, or the disjunction between saying and meaning, but the often problematical process of meaning multiple things simultaneously with one word. […] What is radical about this redefinition is the slight, but fundamental shift in emphasis away from our traditional insistence on allegory’s distinction between word said and meaning meant, to the simultaneity of the process of signifying multiple meaning.76

Rather than equating allegory with extended metaphor, Quilligan characterises allegory as a case of repeated punning. The pun is, for her, the essential marker of allegory, because it is the figure of simultaneous polysemy. The pun opens up several possibilities of meaning, and, in contrast to metaphor, produces multiple meanings that are salient in a given context. What allegory does is to extend the pun, generating “narrative structure out of wordplay.”77 This structure “works horizontally, rather than vertically, so that meaning accretes serially, interconnecting and criss-­ crossing the verbal surface long before one can accurately speak of moving to another level ‘beyond’ the literal.”78 For example, the pun that kick-starts Piers Plowman, according to Quilligan, is the adjective by which the tower is described which Will sees on first waking up: that tower is said to be “trielich ymaked.”79 This phrase is a rich source of polysemy, carrying the meaning of “excellently made,” “truly made,” “made out of three,” or “made like a tree.”80 This tower will later be explained as the tower of truth and the Trinity. It is placed in a landscape that consists of three parts: a ditch, a field, and the tower. This layered landscape will also prove to be the structure of the book, referring  Quilligan, 26.  Quilligan, 22. 78  Quilligan, 28. 79  Quilligan, 58. 80  Quilligan, 58–59. 76 77

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to the fictional, the moral, and the theological landscape simultaneously. These meanings arise at the same time because they arise out of the same polysemic source: the pun of a tower that is “trielich ymaked.” So, for Quilligan, allegory plays out at the literal level. In this, she builds on Morton Bloomfield’s insight that the literal “includes much more than what many take it to include.”81 The main problem with the literal level, Bloomfield says, is that it is equated with realism, despite the fact that it often contains non-naturalistic elements.82 Therefore, an allegory, which typically has a structure that is not very realistic or lifelike, is sometimes spoken of as if it would have no literal level. However, “the literal is not necessarily concrete, nor the allegory abstract.”83 In Bloomfield’s view, the literal level still gives rise to the allegorical level, which is the interpretation of the literal level. Here, ‘the literal level’ is still the text’s first ‘meaning,’ whereas the ‘allegorical level’ is a second meaning. For Quilligan, however, both meanings arise at once, and they do so in the literal level, which is simultaneously the allegorical level. In fact, the allegorical is the literal level par excellence, because allegorical reading is set in motion by wordplay, and wordplay is the literal at its most ‘literal’: “[t]he truly literal meaning of ‘literal’ is, in fact, not ‘actual,’ ‘real,’ or ‘lifelike,’ but ‘letteral’—having to do with the letter, and with the reading of letters grouped into words.”84 The way in which allegory signals its presence, says Quilligan, is by focusing the reader on this essentially literal level by withholding narrative coherence, or plot. She gives the example of Langland: […] Langland frustrates his reader’s normal desires for more interesting extensions of the literal level of the narrative, or for more “plot.” And, paradoxically, by doing so the poet insists that the reader read not less literally, but more literally, for, if the reader can no longer follow an imaginary event in his mind’s eye, he must look at the words on the page. If the text does not present a movielike image of action, he will be reminded that what he is reading is a text. It will be in a sense all he has left to read, for the imagined action will have disappeared. Then Langland, like all allegorists (from Alain de Lille to Hawthorne), has got the reader doing what he wants him to 81  Morton W.  Bloomfield, “Allegory as Interpretation,” New Literary History 3, no. 2 (1972): 316. 82  Bloomfield, 316. 83  Bloomfield, 317. 84  Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, 67.

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do—looking carefully at those words, and the letters used to spell them, written out, on the page. The result is that the reader will become conscious of the significance of these words—of the very process by which they do in fact signify, signifying not only the action, but the meaning of that action.85

In Quilligan’s reasoning, three elements are taken together which I would like to peel apart: punning, horizontality (i.e., literalness, by excluding the verticality of multiple parallel levels of meaning beyond the literal), and simultaneity. Quilligan takes the pun as the basic element of allegory instead of metaphor. Contrary to metaphor, which projects different levels, the pun works only on the literal level. Contrary to (the common idea of) metaphor, which first reads the literal and then climbs up to the figurative, the pun generates multiple meanings at the same time. All of this amounts to the main assertion that allegory is not a kind of translation: “The key to the story’s meaning lies in the text’s language—its most literal aspect—not in a translation of the story’s events to a different (metaphorical) set of terms.”86 But do literality and the process of translation contradict each other? I will try to show that neither this opposition, nor the one between pun and metaphor, hold up in the face of scrutiny. First of all, metaphor does not function as a translation any more than the pun does. Both tropes carry the possibility of referring to more than one meaning. Why would metaphor refer vertically and the pun horizontally? The pun’s play with words might indeed be able to generate narrative structure, but so does the metaphor. An example which Quilligan discusses is that of the Redcrosse Knight, the central character from the first book of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, who wanders around because he is in ‘error,’ the pun being that error means both ‘being wrong’ and, etymologically from Latin, ‘to wander.’ Although the narrative extension of the pun is there, it still plays out in two separate ways: the one where the knight is physically wandering around as an errant knight and the one where he is in the wrong because he has lost the right faith. How is this different from when physical wandering functions allegorically as spiritual wandering via metaphor? Whether one calls this ‘levels’ or not is merely a matter of metaphor: the metaphor of literal and figurative ‘levels’ expresses that different meanings can exist at the same time but not in exactly the same cognitive space. The different meanings generated by the  Quilligan, 67–68.  Quilligan, 68.

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pun cannot occupy the same space any more than those of metaphor can. Quilligan seems to imply that the pun is purely textual, while metaphor is cognitive, but this distinction cannot hold. Secondly, although Quilligan throws out at the front door the idea of multiple levels that follow each other in the succession of interpretation, she seems to readmit it at the backdoor, when she describes the process of allegorical reading as I have just quoted it. She describes how allegory frustrates the reader’s desire for a fuller perspective on what is being told, by not filling out the plot or the details of a scene, which urges the reader to look for that perspective somewhere else. The reader looks for another meaning to what is being said and finds it in the polysemous wordplay of the text, wordplay that is able to project and sustain different meanings with the same words at the same time. The problem is, however, that Quilligan’s account of this process is everything but simultaneous. The pun does not generate its multiple meanings at the same time, because the first meaning has already been interpreted and read as part of the story at the moment when the second meaning—and therefore the presence of the pun—has not even been noticed. This description is similar to those of Fletcher and Kurz, who base their theories on the traditional concept of metaphor and who therefore imagine a reading process as a translation from one level to another. The disconnect between Quilligan’s claim that the pun is the basis of allegory and her description of allegorical reading is due to the fact that the pun is not immediately recognised as a pun; this happens only at the prompt of the interrupted plot. As with metaphor, we encounter the possibility that a trope might not work in allegory as it does outside of allegory. In other words, I think it is perfectly possible to first find “[t]he key to the story’s meaning” in “the text’s language,” and then translate “the story’s events to a different (metaphorical) set of terms.”87 Wordplay and semantic transfer are not opposites. It is exactly the awareness of the play of language that enables the reader of allegory to construct—or translate—several structures of meaning at once. If we thus separate the issue of punning and simultaneity from the issue of literality, we might unravel this difficulty. My claim is that it is the simultaneity inherent to the pun that makes it central to allegory. Quilligan does not theorise the pun very extensively: she takes it to be the basic element of allegory because of her experience of reading allegories, where she is used to encountering puns in significant positions, and she traces back its  Quilligan, 68.

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significance to the fact that allegory is a genre that works with the possibility of polysemy. But polysemy is what defines all tropes. Simultaneity, however, is the exclusive property of the pun. In metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, and so on, polysemy enables the interpretation but is not the outcome; only one meaning is salient in a certain context. A metaphor becomes a pun, however, “in a context where both the literal and the figurative senses are appropriate.”88 The example that Andrew Ortony provides is that of a lamp fetishist who is very fond of a certain lamp, keeping it lit all the time. This person can say: “This lamp is the light of my life,” and speak metaphorically while also using a pun, which activates both the figurative and non-figurative meanings of ‘light.’ It is this simultaneous referentiality that seems to be the defining characteristic of allegory, and therefore it is logical that Quilligan would take the pun to be allegory’s essential element. When allegory uses metaphor, it treats it like a pun, allowing both of its meanings to be salient. All tropes become puns in allegory, and so Quilligan’s mistake is to oppose the pun to metaphor. It has been too little noted in allegorical theory that there is not one basic constitutive trope of allegory but that allegory rather uses the polysemic structure that defines all tropes. Everything that is conventionally interpreted in several different ways can become a propeller of allegory. For instance, Quilligan devotes a lot of attention to the etymologican pun, as when the word ‘error,’ which is an English loanword from Latin, functions in the narrative according to its English and its Latin meaning at the same time. Etymology is indeed another element that has been proclaimed to be the basic element of allegory. For instance, according to Davide del Bello, “etymologies function as the linguistic pillars on which allegory builds its interpretative edifice”: “At a lexical level, etymologies open up interpretative routes that allegory follows and ratifies at higher discursive levels.”89 Del Bello’s subject is allegorical etymology. This is the precursor of the scientific discipline of etymology. Instead of looking for what words used to signify, allegorical etymology searches for indications of meaning in the form of a word. ‘Amicus,’ or friend, for instance, finds its allegorical etymon in ‘animi custos,’ or guardian of the soul. In allegorical etymology, 88  Andrew Ortony, Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 129. 89  Davide Del Bello, Forgotten Paths: Etymology and the Allegorical Mindset (Washington: Catholic university of America press, 2007), 108.

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the linguistic form of a word “is created or is read as an allegory […] of its possible meaning(s).”90 In other words, the form is not experienced as arbitrary but opens up new semantic possibilities: a friend becomes a guardian of the soul. Although we find this sort of elaborate inventions more often in allegoresis, they can function in allegory as well and they are deeply implicated in medieval allegory. With these corrections to Quilligan’s theory in mind, we can reassert her core idea that allegory does not say one thing and mean another. Instead, allegory says one thing and means multiple things at the same time. While I affirm that simultaneity of reference is characteristic of punning and of allegory, I do not follow Quilligan’s argument for literalising allegory. Ironically, it is exactly the instance of punning, which Quilligan has brought to attention, that shows how wordplay can give rise to the perception of different levels of meaning. Further, it is mostly the case in allegory that one level is more easily accessible than the other, or that the other might not even be noticed. One meaning is referenced explicitly and the other implicitly. For these reasons, I will continue to use the terminology of levels: I will talk about one level that is referenced explicitly and the other that is referenced implicitly. Yet, what I take from Quilligan is the realisation that both levels of allegory are simultaneously present in the text and neither is necessarily subordinate to the other. Personification In The Fiction of Truth, Carolynn Van Dyke follows Quilligan in attacking the idea that allegory says one thing and means another. She argues that “we cannot separate speech from meaning. Thus if it says one thing and means another, it both says and means two things. And unless we are linguistic schizophrenics or are willing to ignore half of what we read, a text that says and means two things must say and mean one complex thing.”91 Like Quilligan, Van Dyke assumes that the prototypical allegory is a genre that has its own literary code, and, similarly, she defends the notion of a ‘literal allegory.’ Contrary to Quilligan’s narrative extrapolation of punning, however, Van Dyke takes personification to be the central element and driving force of allegory. More specifically, it is the disjunction between

 Del Bello, 108.  Van Dyke, The Fiction of Truth, 42.

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the abstraction of personifications and their specific, deictic, narrative context that is essential.92 This definition seems to exclude both non-narrative allegory and allegory without personifications. However, Van Dyke counters both of these objections by explaining that the structure of subject and predicate is less important than the combination of deictic and nondeictic: “literary allegory in general is the set of genres that are based on the synthesis of deictic and nondeictic generic codes.”93 Words referring to concepts are paired with references to a particular space, time, and place. Non-narrative allegories can be included under this definition, because they are still “based on similar conjunctions of disparate elements,” and non-personification allegories still incorporate abstraction within a realistic narrative, be it “not as subjects of narrative propositions but in other positions in the poem’s explicit code.”94 Van Dyke therefore offers a reworked definition of the idea that personification makes an allegory. Personification figures have been a staple in the Western allegorical tradition starting with the Psychomachia, but they were never central to allegorical theory until they became the “prototype of the modern post-Romantic concept of allegory.”95 To Curtius, Auerbach, and Lewis, allegory is personification allegory. Personification signals that extended metaphor is allegory, according to Armand Strubel: “Dans la grande majorité des œuvres, l’effet allégorique est obtenu par la collaboration étroite des deux figures; l’image de la personnification comme sujet et de la métaphore comme verbe […].”96 Those who think with metaphor theory also think of personification as a privileged kind of metaphor within allegory. Although “it is not a necessary property of allegory,” it is “still a prototypical one.”97 Peter Crisp differentiates between universal and culturally specific factors to why this is the case. On the one hand, personification is culturally specific to the  Van Dyke, 40.  Van Dyke, 40. 94  Van Dyke, 40. 95  Peter Crisp, “Allegory: Conceptual Metaphor in History,” Language and Literature 10, no. 1 (2001): 13. 96  Armand Strubel, “‘Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis,’” 49. “In the vast majority of works, the allegorical effect is achieved by the close collaboration of the two figures: personification as the subject and metaphor as the verb [...].” Cf., Morton W. Bloomfield, “A Grammatical Approach to Personification Allegory,” Modern Philology 60, no. 3 (1963): 166. 97  Crisp, “Allegory: Conceptual Metaphor in History.” 92 93

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Western tradition of allegory; allegory often signals its presence by means of personification, and there is a whole tradition of well-known personification figures such as Love, the Church, the Virtues, or psychological powers.98 On the other hand, personification turns up in so many allegories because it offers a way of getting around some pragmatic constraints of allegory, notably the fact that “allegory, unlike a standard linguistic metaphor, lacks the context of a metaphorical frame that can refer literally and directly to its target domain.”99 Because it is difficult for allegory to express specific meaning in the target domain, so Crisp argues, allegory makes a virtue of “maximizing generalizable, non-specific, meaning, of which abstraction is the limiting case.”100 One could also argue that personifications are one of the most explicit ways of referring to two meanings at once: a pun or a metaphor can be overlooked, but the name of a personification clearly advertises its other meaning. This renders it very useful in referring to the target domain. However, this same characteristic ensuring personification’s centrality to allegory has also sometimes been the reason for its dismissal from the centre of allegory. As Hans Robert Jauss points out, personification does not conform to the traditional definition of allegory as saying one thing in words and meaning something else.101 Indeed, a personification like ‘Lady Love’ announces its meaning apparently without any doubleness. An influential article has been that of Robert Worth Frank from 1953, “The Art of Reading Medieval Personification-Allegory.” Frank distinguishes between two kinds of allegory, which each require a different art of reading.102 In “symbol-allegory,” “characters and significant details are concrete and have a second meaning, that is, are symbols.”103 An example of this kind of allegory is Dante’s Divina Commedia. In “personification-­ allegory,” however, “characters and significant details are abstractions and

98  Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). 99  Newman, 13. 100  Newman, 13–14. 101   Hans Robert Jauss, “Form und Auffassung der Allegorie in der Tradition der Psychomachia,” in Medium Aevum Vivum: Festschrift für Walther Bulst, ed. Hans Robert Jauss and Dieter Schaller (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1960), 285. 102  Robert Worth Frank, “The Art of Reading Medieval Personification-Article,” ELH 20, no. 4 (1953): 237–50. 103  Frank, 253.

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have only one meaning, that is, are personifications.”104 The mistake made in reading this kind of allegory is “the mistake of looking for more hidden meaning than the form allows.”105 By declaring all allegory literal, Carolynn Van Dyke once again makes personification into the prototypical instance of allegory. Van Dyke’s literalising goes much further than Quilligan’s. She claims that “the notion of parallel semiotic levels” is useful as an analytical tool, but “such an analysis of components is by no means a description of the compound.”106 She asserts, taking the example of Prudentius’ Psychomachia as a prototypical allegory, that “the text itself is neither a level with implicit parallels nor a set of parallel levels; it is a line […].”107 So, according to Van Dyke, instead of developing two narratives or schemas at the same time but apart from each other and coherent in itself, allegory rather tells one story, but is different from other literature in that it binds together the abstract and the concrete in an unusual relationship. She asserts that a good reader of allegory will not take the discrepancy as a signal that there are two meaningful structures at play but rather as a challenge to make the discrepancy fit. Van Dyke arrives at this conclusion through an analysis of the Psychomachia. She notices that the reader is often unable to allegorise, in the sense of transferring each element of the narrative, from epic battle to psychological conflict. Many elements in the fictional world do not seem to correspond to another level of meaning. For instance, it has often been noted with respect to the Psychomachia how improper it seems that virtues engage in a graphic battle with no shortage of blood, gore, and nasty detail. Moreover, she says, “many passages cannot be allegorized because they are doctrinally explicit already.”108 She illustrates her point with the personifications’ speeches, in which they talk about sin, virtue, and doctrine. In the light of these “concrete details that cannot be allegorized and the discourses that need no allegorization,”109 Van Dyke concludes that “the traditional definition of allegory is a straitjacket that produces frustration for the reader and adverse critical judgments of the poem that it fails to fit.”110  Frank, 253.  Frank, 242. 106  Van Dyke, 42. 107  Van Dyke, The Fiction of Truth, 42. 108  Van Dyke, 34. 109  Van Dyke, 34. 110  Van Dyke, 34. 104 105

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Van Dyke makes a valid point, namely that not every element of an allegory carries a double reference: sometimes, the particular is just particular and the general is just general. However, from the observation that allegory is never a one-to-one mapping of particular to general meanings, she concludes that allegory involves no doubleness at all but is a fully literal straight line. She states that the general and the particular, the two sets of meaning that would normally make up the two levels of allegory, exist on this line next to each other. The first problem is that it is a rash generalisation from ‘not everything’ to ‘nothing.’ Even the traditional concept of allegory does not require that everything in an allegory can be read on two levels. This does not necessarily mean that the concept of two levels should be abandoned. The second problem is that personification itself, Van Dyke’s allegorical master trope, is not one-dimensionally literal but a trope like any other, functioning on two levels at once. As Morton Bloomfield notes, “[w]hen we make inanimate nouns animate, we are making deictic (or pointer) nouns out of non-deictic nouns.”111 The personification functions as a concrete person or a concrete entity on the literal level of the allegorical narrative, where it has no general reference. It might seem as if it carries general reference on the literal level because of its name, but the fact that a word is a name should be enough to make clear that it cannot refer to a general meaning: a name only has particular meaning, indeed indicates particular meaning.112 Therefore, personifications do function at two levels at once: literally, as persons with a name, and figuratively, as abstractions. Metonymy Having brought in these objections, I think that if we tone down Van Dyke’s literalising, we can certainly make the argument for a certain degree of fluidity between the literal and figurative levels. To find a way of stressing the horizontal links of allegory without literalising, I turn to Sayre Greenfield’s The Ends of Allegory. Greenfield defines the allegorical text as a text in which the presence of a pattern of metaphors and metonyms may be discerned.113 Basing himself on Roman Jakobson but also taking into  Bloomfield, “A Grammatical Approach to Personification Allegory,” 164.  Crisp, “Allegory: Conceptual Metaphor in History,” 16–17. 113  Sayre N.  Greenfield, The Ends of Allegory (Newark (Del.): University of Delaware Press, 1998). 111 112

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account the deconstructionist critiques on Jakobson, Greenfield uses the terms ‘metaphor’ and ‘metonymy’ not to denote the figures of speech but processes of thought: metaphor stands for verticality, substitution, and simultaneity, while metonymy represents a mode of thinking that works with horizontality, combination, and successiveness. What Greenfield stresses is that to read an allegory is to search for connections on both these axes at once. One metaphor does not make an allegory, and neither does a whole series of metaphors. What is needed in addition is the horizontal combination of elements on both levels of the metaphor: “the reader, to read allegorically, must find a series of metaphoric parallels that connect two (or more) associative, metonymic extensions of key ideas.”114 Greenfield analyses allegorical structure by drawing up diagrams where elements are linked vertically by metaphors and horizontally by metonymical links. Such a diagram does not account for everything that occurs in allegory: “A metaphoric extension of a term may occur without precipitating metonymic extensions, and metonymic extensions in one sphere of reference may accrete without metaphoric parallels to connect them to other spheres of reference.”115 However, it is the presence of the pattern that “triggers the general identification of the text as ‘an allegory.’”116 Of the most interest to me in Greenfield’s book is his discussion of “the untidiness of allegory,” or the way in which this basic pattern extends its branches in all directions and develops a chaotic network of both vertical and horizontal associations.117 The example he uses is William Blake’s short poem “The Sick Rose”: O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And this dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

 Greenfield, 64.  Greenfield, 64. 116  Greenfield, 64. 117  Greenfield, 66–85. 114 115

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On the one hand, there is the literal level of a diseased rose in her flowerbed, gnawed at by insects and slowly withering away. If we follow the clue of the strongly charged language to also interpret figuratively, we might also imagine a woman, a bed, sex, death, and distress. However, this rendering of the reading process is not completely correct. Take, for instance, the “dark secret love” from the second to last line, which is difficult to link to a diseased rose. Either this is one of the elements which has no double reference and which, exceptionally, refers only to the implicit and figurative level of meaning, although it is itself explicit and literal. Or, we can assume that it does have a double reference. In that case, it refers figuratively to the rose and literally to the woman (in Greenfield’s interpretation). Both interpretative scenarios must lead to the conclusion that levels are not consistently literal or consistently figurative, that this might shift from phrase to phrase. In Van Dyke’s reasoning, this would be the moment to declare that we have to do away with allegorical levels altogether. Yet, Van Dyke’s definition of abstractions as agents would be as insufficient as the theory of literal and figurative levels in getting to the bottom of this allegorical poem. There does not seem to be a conjunction of the concrete and the abstract, as it seems unlikely that the poem speaks about the abstract aspects of plant diseases or about the rose as an ‘embodied abstraction’ such as Hope or Love. Instead, we feel sure that the poem is speaking about two things simultaneously, and those two things cannot be distinguished as literal and figurative or concrete and abstract. Greenfield describes the reading of this poem as “fill[ing] in portions of both metonymic extensions with the help of metaphoric thinking.”118 In fact, what remains after we have done away with the characterisation of allegorical levels as literal and figurative or concrete and abstract, and so with the basis of most of the definitions for allegory, is the plain presence of levels, a pattern of meaning that must be multiplied. “Allegory is not translating; it is the creation of a metaphoric and metonymic pattern.”119 Two levels of meaning are to be read simultaneously, both by searching for polysemy in the words of the text and by linking these multiple meanings to each other in succession. But, as Greenfield shows, the actual practice of reading allegory is messy and chaotic. When he tries to map his own reading as a diagram of vertical and horizontal  Greenfield, 67.  Greenfield, 67.

118 119

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relations, the basic pattern is indeed that of two paths of semantically contiguous words.120 However, there are byways, shortcuts, and blind alleys which the words of the poem follow. Greenfield explains: “One creates allegory not by finding a complete design in the text but by projecting or understanding the presence of such a metaphoric-metonymic design, complete or not.”121

Allegory as Idea: A Vital Belief and Conceptions of Allegory In the previous part, I looked at the formal structure of allegory, or allegory as verbal expression, which is how Genette defines mode. However, allegory is not primarily perceived as a mode of verbal expression. Historically, people have not been writing and reading allegory as a projection of lines of reference but rather as a rhetorical flourish, as an exaggerated version of metaphor, as a genre such as the allegorical dream vision or romance, or as a way to bring poetry up to the level of philosophy. Allegory has not usually been defined by how it produces meaning but by which meaning it produces and by the significance attributed to speaking with a double meaning. If we want to talk about what allegory is, then we have to take these beliefs and conceptions into account, because they determine how allegory is written and how it is read in different historical periods. Despite the common core that I believe we can discern in allegorical texts as a mode of expression, allegory has looked wildly different in different periods and has been conceptualised in ways which are often opposed to each other. It is these beliefs and conceptions that decide whether allegory functions as a mode or a genre, and what that genre looks like; whether it will appear occasionally and in a supporting role or as the star of its own allegorical universe. Language: Suprarealism and Self-Consciousness Allegory is influenced by changing conceptions not only about literature, but also about language, hermeneutics, worldview, epistemology, and ontology. Its structure of double reference, the possibility of communicating two things at once, of an object referring to another object, and, above  Greenfield, 68.  Greenfield, 68.

120 121

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all, of something concrete referring to the abstract, gets to the heart of the power and mystery of language and how language relates to the structure of existence. Whether taken as the continuation of the trope of tropes, or the veil that obscures naked truths, or the symbol that gives a flavour of transcendence to the enraptured reader, allegory has always been implicated in beliefs about language, truth, and existence. But allegory is not just a carrier for such ideas; its play with reference and its self-conscious attitude towards reference mean that it is deeply shaped by them. The generic mark of allegorical texts, says Quilligan, is a “particular emphasis on language as their first focus and ultimate subject”: All true narrative allegory has its source in a culture’s attitude toward language, and in that attitude, as embodied in the language itself, allegory finds the limits of its possibility. It is a genre beginning in, focused on, and ending with “words, words.” Much (perhaps all) fiction may be said to concern itself self-reflexively with language. In one way or another verbal artifacts are ultimately about the process of making them. But allegories are about the making of allegory in extremely particular ways […].122

Again, the intensity with which allegory focuses on itself provides the definition of the genre. This self-consciousness expresses itself as an acting-out of the attitude a culture has towards language. Quilligan believes that a culture must hold a certain kind of attitude with regard to language for allegory to come into being. Allegories are not only always about language; more particularly, they are about “the ways in which language itself can reveal to man his highest spiritual purpose within the cosmos.”123 Therefore, “allegory always presupposes at least a potential sacralising power in language, and it is possible to write and read allegory intelligently only in those cultural contexts which grant to language a significance beyond that belonging to a merely arbitrary system of signs.”124 Quilligan calls this the suprarealist attitude towards words. What must be held in mind is that she is specifically talking about allegory as a genre, or allegorical narrative. Thus, Quilligan attributes the lack of an allegorical genre before Late Antiquity to the lack of a suprarealist attitude to language. She similarly links the dwindling of allegory from the late  Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, 15.  Quilligan, 156. 124  Quilligan, 156. 122 123

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seventeenth until the twentieth century to the epistemological shift from words to things in neoclassical rhetoric and Enlightenment thinking. Gordon Teskey, in his book Allegory and Violence, puts the same stress on suprarealism and does go so far as to claim that allegory did end, in a way, with the Enlightenment. “Although allegories may appear after the Enlightenment, […] they no longer have, or belong to, a history.”125 For Teskey, it is obvious that all allegories are logocentrically grounded, because the ‘other’ in allegory, the other meaning, is unambiguously determined as the ideal meaning, “the ineffable presence into which, it is supposed, everything in the allegorical work ultimately is drawn.”126 In suprarealist times, this ideal meaning of the particular allegorical work is connected to an absolute meaning: the logos. Without such an absolute meaning as its focus, allegory loses its foundation. Reality: Fabulism and Figuralism However, let us rather keep to the minor claim that the cultural attitude to language is decisive for the form that allegory takes. The logic here is that our attitudes towards language are about much more than language theory. Ideas about language are implicated in our epistemologies and our hermeneutics, in our ways of knowing and ways of reading. The stronger these connections are in a culture, the more allegory will have the chance to develop. Deborah Madsen has strengthened this hypothesis by showing that the nature of the connections determines how allegory is perceived to function and may also shape allegorical form. Madsen sees the history of allegory as a competition between two dominant traditions of generic definition.127 On the one hand, there is the model that views allegory as a rhetorical form, as metaphor. In this definition, allegory says one thing and means another. Madsen historically associates this model with Greek, Roman, and Judaic literature. On the other hand, there is the competing model of typology, or the reflection of the Old Testament in the New, developed as a system by the Gospel writers and patristic exegetes. In this system, allegory is considered to function metonymically. Whereas in the older system, allegorical meaning was seen as an extrinsic and imported  Gordon Teskey, Allegory and Violence (Cornell University Press, 1996), 157.  Teskey, 5. 127  The two models here described are derived from a long tradition of exegetical theory, most notably reinterpreted by Auerbach as literary theory in his article “Figura.” 125 126

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arbitrary significance, it now became “an intrinsic and mystical core of meaning embedded in the text by God and perceptible to divinely inspired readers.”128 Madsen calls the two viewpoints respectively fabulism and figuralism. Their difference lies not necessarily in their form but in the value projected onto allegorical form. In figuralism, not only is there no ‘beyond the text,’ but the readers and their interpretations are “linked to the entire exegetical scheme by the concept that Christ, as the spiritual sense of Scripture, corresponds to the image of God that resides in the individual soul.”129 Text, meaning, and interpretation are perceived not as separate elements in different realms, but as being part of the same divine text, which is meaning and interpretation at the same time. Everything in this scheme is metonymically linked and not metaphorically, because of the underlying “idea of God as an absolute being, the creator, and active ruler of the world; recognizable through his creatures and comprehensible through the logos; incarnate in the flesh, the Church, and the Bible.”130 I want to stress that ‘fabulism’ and ‘figuralism’ are for Madsen not primarily forms of allegory but beliefs which are projected onto allegory and which are linked to conceptualisations of what a text is, what interpretation is, and what meaning is. According to Madsen, “[t]he difference between metonymic metaphor and metaphoric metonymy is a matter of belief: if we believe the poet who claims that the soul stands for and participates in the logos then the image is a metonymy; if we do not, then the image is metaphoric.”131 A very important role in these beliefs is played by the sacred or otherwise culturally dominant text that Quilligan calls “the pretext.” Whereas allegory’s double reference can be aimed at any domain, it is historically mostly in discussion with such a pretext that the allegory enfolds. As Quilligan says, “it is primarily the status of the language in the pretext which determines the development of the allegory; if its language can name truth, then the language of the allegorical narrative will be able to.”132 Medieval and early modern allegorical theory, for instance, mostly takes as its starting point the exceptional status and power attributed to 128  Deborah L. Madsen, Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 3. 129  Madsen, 50. 130  Madsen, 50. 131  Madsen, 86. 132  Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, 98.

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the language of Scripture. Typology, or the allegorical form where historical persons or events refer back or forward to other historical persons or events, depends on the trust that certain pretexts hold historical truths that language is able to disclose. Other common pretexts are canonical texts from Antiquity such as the Aeneid or the Metamorphoses. As these canonical texts are imbued with new meaning in new contexts by every generation, their language is credited with the power to carry over their authority to new texts through allegory. Because allegory concerns itself with dominant ways of knowing and models of interpretation, it offers a commentary on how a culture interprets its canonical texts. As the relation to the canonical text shifts, so does the way in which allegory functions. For instance, Madsen has a chapter where she describes how the relation of allegorical narrative to the scriptural pretext shifts away from the intermediate figure of the church during the Middle Ages towards subjective individuality in Protestantism, which entails a shift away from fabulism, expressed as one-to-one relations, in favour of the polyvalence and uncertainty of figuralism. These shifts in the discourse and beliefs upholding allegory take place whenever allegory is perceived as being in a too indirect relation to truth. What Madsen calls figuralism is the reaction to this doubt. Figuralism makes one domain out of two domains of meaning, thus strengthening the vertical links between elements. This new distribution of value within the allegorical system might only encourage new readings of old allegories. But it might also lead to new allegorical forms, in which the relation between two vertical elements is felt to be so strong that they do not need to be related horizontally. In the extreme case, this leads to the viewpoint of symbolism, or pure verticality, which requires an allegorical form that is no longer allegorical, because it contains just one polysemic element and no levels of reference. This panorama is what Winthrop Wetherbee describes for the twelfth century when he distinguishes Chartrian Platonism, or Rationalism, from Neoplatonist tendencies of the time, or Symbolism.133 On the one side, that of Rationalism, we have the idea of a reality on different levels: the human microcosm reflects the cosmic body, and nature is the copy of an ideal world. On the other side, we have a Neoplatonism that tracks each individual nature back to its divine origin. The former view is associated 133  Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).

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with the allegorical poetry of Bernard Silvester, Alan of Lille, and Jean of Hauville, whereas the latter denies the relevance of allegory (although Wetherbee takes care to point out that the opposition is in no way absolute). The same dynamic, which is a constant in the history of allegory, is carried to an extreme in nineteenth-century symbolism, where a backlash against a certain conception of allegory is able in effect to ban allegory from the literary scene. Consider the following well-known quote from Goethe’s Maximen und Reflexionen: Allegory transforms an object of perception into a concept, the concept into an image, but in such a way that the concept continues to remain circumscribed and completely available and expressible within the image. […] Symbolism transforms an object of perception into an idea, the idea into an image, and does it in such a way that the idea always remains infinitely operative and unattainable so that even if it is put into words in all languages, it still remains inexpressible.134

This distinction between allegory and symbol is about more than language; in fact, it becomes a distinction between language on the one hand and an experience that remains unspoken on the other hand. Allegory is reduced to “a picture-language,” in the words of Coleridge, which joins concepts and images.135 The symbol, in contrast, “is characterized by a translucence of the Eternal through and in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that Unity, of which it is the representative.”136 Here, we find a suprarealist attitude but not one that is directed at language. Rather, symbolism rests on a philosophy of visual experience and opposes the simultaneity of seeing to the gradual progress 134   Johann Wolfgang von  Goethe, “Maximen und Reflexionen,” in Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. Trunz, Erich, vol. 12 (München: Beck, 1981), 470–71. “Die Allegorie verwandelt die Erscheinung in einen Begriff, den Begriff in ein Bild, doch so, dass der Begriff im Bilde immer noch begränzt und vollständig zu halten und zu haben und an demselben auszusprechen sei. […] Die Symbolik verwandelt die Erscheinung in Idee, die Idee in ein Bild, und so, dass die Idee im Bild immer unendlich wirksam und unerreichbar bleibt und, selbst in allen Sprachen ausgesprochen, doch unaussprechlich bliebe.” Translation from Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Maxims and Reflections, ed. Peter Hutchinson and Elisabeth Stopp (London: Penguin, 1998), 141. 135  Cited in Madsen, Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre, 111. 136  Cited in Madsen, 111.

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of allegory in language. Within this attitude, the symbol cannot be allegory, because it is an isolated element that gives direct imaginative access to the unity it represents and of which it is a part, whereas allegory arises from the succession of words and their normative interpretation. Reversal of Values This distinction is carried over into twentieth-century discussions of allegory, where a remarkable reversal takes place: the temporal predicament of allegory is now revalued against the naive idealism of symbolism. In Die Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels, Walter Benjamin asserts that allegory is not a play with images but a fundamental way of expression, in the same way that language and writing are expressions.137 Benjamin does not uphold the opposition of symbolism and allegory. Rather, he states that the concept of the symbol is an aspect of allegory that makes no sense in isolation; symbol is allegory misunderstood. Allegory is a kind of experience as well as an expression of it. It is an experience of the world not as being in harmony but as fragmented, shifting, and broken, in ruins. Baroque allegory views the world as an aggregation of signs in a complex figuration and shows a rupture between language and reality. Representation is not a given but an uncertain possibility. Allegory accepts that semantic plurality cannot be resolved and represents this irresolution as it is. It offers knowledge but no truth. Not that it does not desire unity and truth; as Cowan explains, “Benjamin’s exposition implies that the Romantic symbol is an artificial isolation of the nostalgic impulse within allegory, a desire for being that grew as the consciousness of this ontological gap was awakened.”138 Symbolism adopts allegory’s desire for perfect meaningfulness but lacks the self-awareness of its impossibility that is allegory’s main trait. Paul de Man calls the ideology behind symbolism an act of self-­ mystification. It is a “defensive strategy” trying to escape the self-­ knowledge that is inherent to allegory139: 137  Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1928). 138  Bainard Cowan, “Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory,” New German Critique 22 (1981): 109–22. 139  Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971), 208.

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Whereas the symbol postulates the possibility of an identity or identification, allegory designates primarily a distance in relation to its own origin, and, renouncing the nostalgia and the desire to coincide, it establishes its language in the void of this temporal difference.140

Allegory, however, is not without its own measures of self-mystification. It might not strive for identification, but it does want to convey truth, which is dependent on a stable system of meaning. De Man quotes Hegel saying that allegory “aims for the most complete clarity, so that the external means it uses must be as transparent as possible with regard to the meaning it is to make apparent.” However, says de Man, “[t]he difficulty of allegory is rather that this emphatic clarity of representation does not stand in the service of something that can be represented.”141 In other words, the idea of functional polysemy that allegory so openly flaunts is undercut by the fact that polysemy cannot be controlled and directed by allegory. “Allegory is the purveyor of demanding truths, and thus its burden is to articulate an epistemological order of truth and deceit with a narrative or compositional order of persuasion.”142 Rhetorical persuasion, however, has its own episteme and tends to undercut every such order of truth. In this respect, allegory becomes, for de Man and other post-­ structuralist thinkers, paradigmatic of the situation of literature in general. In the same volume, Joel Fineman, too, stresses the structuralism of allegory that enables this post-structuralist analysis. Allegory is made up of a “curiously pure structurality”; it “begins with structure, thinks itself through it.”143 This structurality is a mark of literature in general, which allegory emphasises. It “presupposes the same system of multiply articulated levels as does that of allegory, but also that the possibility of such coherently polysemic significance originates out of the same intention— what I call desire—as does allegorical narrative.”144 This desire is the thematic impulse which drives allegory forward and which is situated in “an

 de Man, 207.  Paul de Man, ‘Pascal’s Allegory of Persuasion’, in Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 1. 142  de Man, 208. 143  Joel Fineman, “The Structure of Allegorical Desire,” in Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 32. 144  Fineman, 26. 140 141

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essentially pietistic cosmology devoted to the corroboration of divinely ordered space and time.”145 In conclusion, to borrow the words of Susanne Knaller, “we can say that the allegorical text does not so much conceal this alienation as it maintains the illusionary, referential moment as well as that of the performative function of language by maintaining the substitution process, the figure that is a figure of permanent self-referentiality.”146 Whereas the symbol collapses structure and appears when allegory begins to doubt its own potential for reference, allegory is a direct engagement with the structure of language and the concept of reference. It lays open the structure of reference, thus baring it to scrutiny, yet balances its own meaning on the precise point where interpretation and an order of truth that regulates interpretation stabilise each other. This structurality does not necessarily entail a particular set of values. As Madsen concludes: […] allegory is not possessed of a set of essential traits that are timeless and immutable. Allegory is not simply conservative or radical, not simply a method of evading or confronting the problematic nature of modern history. Like all genres, allegory is available for many uses and it is only the act of essentializing a generic definition that is an unequivocally pejorative act.147

This goes against critics like Greenfield,148 Clifford,149 or Cantarow,150 who have argued, often convincingly, that allegory cannot but support cultural and political hegemonies. Their argument comes down to the fact that allegory can only work with conventional significations, because otherwise the reading of the text as allegory would become impossible, and that readers of allegory have not much freedom of interpretation, as they must follow the guidance of the text in order to construct the allegorical levels. Indeed, as Quilligan remarks, “readers of allegory […] read an allegory by learning how to read it,” and it is the allegory itself that teaches  Fineman, 30.  Susanne Knaller, “A Theory of Allegory beyond Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man; with Some Remarks on Allegory and Memory,” The Germanic Review 77, no. 2 (2002): 90. 147  Madsen, Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre, 129. 148  Greenfield, The Ends of Allegory. 149  Gay Clifford, The Transformations of Allegory (London and Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1974). 150  Ellen Cantarow, “A Wilderness of Opinions Confounded: Allegory and Ideology,” College English 34, no. 2 (1972): 215–38. 145 146

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them, by way of conventions.151 Allegorical interpretation is to a great extent circular: the allegorical text expresses itself as the presupposition of an interpretation, which must be interpretable, and if the reader does not follow the suggestion, then there is no allegory to read. On the other hand, the analysis of every sophisticated allegorical text shows a reading process in which the guide disappears at times, in which roads split and converge at random, and in which the road map turns out to be vague and elusive. Every good allegory knows how to play with interpretation. This does open, in my opinion, the possibility of allegories that can convey meaning outside the dominant normative frames. The same is true of Quilligan’s ‘suprarealism’: historically, we indeed see that allegory prospers in suprarealist times and declines when language falls off its metaphysical pedestal. However, this might be due more to the association of both than to their necessary correlation. Rather than depending on specific kinds of ideas, “[t]he reading of allegory then depends on the epistemological perspective that constitutes textual and linguistic conceptions.”152 In the chapters that follow, I want to apply the theoretical distinctions I have described to a reading of Hildegard’s visions. The next chapter discusses the effort of Hildegard’s allegorical exegesis in her Homilies on the Gospels to transfer the principle of simultaneity from allegory to allegoresis. The fifth chapter shows how the structurality of Hildegard’s method (in Knaller’s words, the effort to “maintain the substitution process”) meets its limits in narrative allegory, in the description of the reality of the cosmos, and in the description of the end of time. The three subsequent chapters analyse the interaction between allegorical form and the theoretical frames that inform it. Chapter 6 discusses how Hildegard transforms traditional allegorical hermeneutics into a theory of language in cognition, and shows the analogies between this epistemology and the allegorical form of the visions. Chapter 7 traces this same allegorical discourse in theory about revelation, exegetical revelation, and prophecy. Here, too, I suggest that the theory informs the structure of Hildegard’s own visions. The last chapter uses the insights from the whole book to connect Hildegard’s ideas and literary forms to larger trends and shifts in practices of exegesis, exegetical theory, allegorical theory, and language philosophy.  Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, 227.  Susanne Knaller, “A Theory of Allegory beyond Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man; with Some Remarks on Allegory and Memory,” 92. 151 152

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References Auerbach, Erich. 1984. Figura. In Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, ed. Ralph Mannheim, 11–76. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Augustine. 1995. De doctrina christiana. Edited by Roger P.H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon. Bainard Cowan. 1981. Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Allegory. New German Critique 22: 109–122. Beda Venerabilis. 1975. De schematibus et tropis. Ed. Calvin Kendall. CCSL 123A. Turnhout: Brepols. Benjamin, Walter. 1928. Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Bezner, Frank. 2007. Figmenta animi oder der “Denkraum des Fiktiven”: Zur Entkopplung von Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit bei Peter Abailard. In Impulse und Resonanzen, ed. Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Cora Dietl, Annette Gerok-Reiter, Christoph Huber, and Paul Sappler, 19–33. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. ———. 2013. Iam non opus est figuris: Konzeptualisierung und Literarisierung des Figuralen bei Peter Abaelard. In Figura: Dynamiken der Zeiten und Zeichen im Mittelalter, ed. Christian Kiening and Katharina Mertens Fleury. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Blank, Walter. 1970. Die deutsche Minneallegorie: Gestaltung und Funktion einer spätmittelalterlichen Dichtungsform. Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag. Bloomfield, Morton W. 1963. A Grammatical Approach to Personification Allegory. Modern Philology 60 (3): 161–171. ———. 1972. Allegory as Interpretation. New Literary History 3 (2): 301–317. Brinkmann, Hennig. 1971. Verhüllung (“Integumentum”) als literarische Darstellungsform im Mittelalter. In Der Begriff der repraesentatio im Mittelalter, ed. Albert Zimmerman, 314–339. Berlin: de Gruyter. Bruns, Gerald L. 1988. The Hermeneutics of Allegory and the History of Interpretation. Comparative Literature 40 (4): 384–395. Cantarow, Ellen. 1972. A Wilderness of Opinions Confounded: Allegory and Ideology. College English 34 (2): 215–238. Chenu, Marie-Dominique. 1955. Involucrum. Le mythe selon les théologiens médiévaux. Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 22: 75–79. ———. 1976. La théologie au douzième siècle. Paris: Vrin. Clifford, Gay. 1974. The Transformations of Allegory. London and Boston: Routledge & K. Paul. Copeland, Rita, and Ineke Sluiter. 2009. Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300–1475. Oxford: Oxford university press. Copeland, Rita, and Peter T.  Struck, ed. 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Allegory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Copeland, Rita, and Stephen Melville. 1991. Allegory and Allegoresis, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics. Exemplaria 3, no. 1. Crisp, Peter. 2001. Allegory: Conceptual Metaphor in History. Language and Literature 10 (1): 5–19. Dahan, Gilbert. 2005. L’allégorie dans l’exégèse chrétienne de la bible au Moyen Age. In Allégorie des poètes, allégorie des philosophes: Études sur la poétique et l’herméneutique de l’antiquité à la Réforme, ed. Gilbert Dahan and Richard Goulet, 205–230. Paris: Vrin. De Bruyne, Edgar. 1946. Etudes d’esthétique médiévale. Vol. 2. Paris: Albin Michel. Del Bello, Davide. 2007. Forgotten Paths: Etymology and the Allegorical Mindset. Washington: Catholic university of America press. Dronke, Peter. 1974. Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism. Leiden: Brill. Ernst Hellgardt. 1979. Erkenntnistheoretisch-ontologische Probleme uneigentlicher Sprache in Rhetorik und Allegorese. In Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug, 12–24. Stuttgart: Metzler. Fineman, Joel. 1981. The Structure of Allegorical Desire. In Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, 26–60. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Fletcher, Angus. 1964. Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Frank, Robert Worth. 1953. The Art of Reading Medieval Personification-Article. ELH 20 (4): 237–250. Gellrich, Jesse M. 2002. Allegory and Materiality: Medieval Foundations of the Modern Debate. The Germanic Review 77 (2): 146–159. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1981. Maximen und Reflexionen. In Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. Erich Trunz, vol. 12. München: Beck. ———. 1998. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Maxims and Reflections. Ed. Peter Hutchinson and Elisabeth Stopp. London: Penguin. Greenfield, Sayre N. 1998. The Ends of Allegory. Newark (Del.): University of Delaware press. Honig, Edwin. 1966, 1959. Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory. Irvine, Martin. 1994. The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary Theory, 350–1100. Cambridge: Cambridge university press. Jantsch, Heinz. 1959. Studien zum Symbolischen in frühmittelhochdeutscher Literatur. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Jauss, Hans Robert. 1960. Form und Auffassung der Allegorie in der Tradition der Psychomachia. In Medium Aevum Vivum: Festschrift für Walther Bulst, ed. Hans Robert Jauss and Dieter Schaller, 179–211. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. ———. 1968. Entstehung und Strukturwandel der allegorischen Dichtung. In Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, ed. Hans Robert Jauss and Erich Köhler, 6.1:146–244. Heidelberg: Winter.

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Jeauneau, Édouard. 1957. L’usage de la notion d’integumentum à travers les gloses de Guillaume de Conches. Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 24: 35–100. Knaller, Susanne. 2002. A Theory of Allegory beyond Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man; with Some Remarks on Allegory and Memory. The Germanic Review 77 (2): 83–101. Krewitt, Ulrich. 1971. Metapher und tropische Rede in der Auffassung des Mittelalters. Ratingen, Kastellaun, Wuppertal: Henn Verlag. Kurz, Gerhard. 1979. Zu einer Hermeneutik der literarischen Allegorie. In Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug, 12–24. Stuttgart: Metzler. ———. 1982. Metapher, Allegorie, Symbol. 4th ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. Lewis, C.S. 1936. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. New York: Oxford university press. de Lubac, Henri. 1959. Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’écriture. Paris: Aubier. Lynch, Kathryn L. 1990. Review. Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique. Jon Whitman. Speculum 65 (4): 1079–1081. Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius. 1963. Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis. Leipzig: Teubner. Madsen, Deborah L. 1994. Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre. New York: St. Martin’s Press. de Man, Paul. 1971. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1981. Pascal’s Allegory of Persuasion. In Allegory and Representation, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, 1–25. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Meier, Christel. 1976. Überlegungen zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Allegorie-­ Forschung. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mischformen. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10: 1–69. Michel, Paul. 1992. Übergangsformen zwischen Typologie und anderen Gestalten des Textbezugs. In Bildhafte Rede im Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit: Probleme ihrer Legitimation und ihrer Funktion, ed. Wolfgang Harms and Klaus Speckenbach, 43–72. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Most, Glenn W. 2010. Hellenistic Allegory and Early Imperial Rhetoric. In The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter T.  Struck, 26–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Newman, Barbara. 2003. God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Obbink, Dirk. 2010. Early Greek Allegory. In The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck, 15–25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Ohly, Friedrich. 1958. Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalters. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 58: 1–23. ———. 1977. Halbbiblische und außerbiblische Typologie. In Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung, Darmstadt, 361–400. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Ortony, Andrew. 1998. Metaphor and Thought. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quilligan, Maureen. 1992. The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre. Cornell University Press. Quintilian, Marcus Fabius. 1971. Institutio Oratoria. Ed. Ludwig Radermacher and Vinzenz Buchheit. Leipzig: Teubner. Stock, Brian. Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester. Princeton: Princeton university press, 1972. Strubel, Armand. 1975. “Allegoria in factis” et “Allegoria in verbis”. Poétique 23: 342–357. Suntrup, Rudolf. 1984. Zur sprachlichen Form der Typologie. In Geistliche Denkformen in der Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Klaus Grubmüller, Klaus Speckenbach, and Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, 23–68. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Teskey, Gordon. 1996. Allegory and Violence. Cornell University Press. Turner, Denys. 2010. Allegory in Christian Late Antiquity. In The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter T.  Struck, 71–82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tuve, Rosemond. 1966. Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and Their Posterity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Van Dyke, Carolynn. 1985. The Fiction of Truth: Structures of Meaning in Narrative and Dramatic Allegory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wetherbee, Winthrop. 1972. Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres. Princeton, Princeton University Press. Whitman, Jon. 1987. Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2003. Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Wood, Susan. 1998. Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock. Zemler-Cizewski, Wanda. 1994. From Metaphor to Theology: Proprium and Translatum in Cicero, Augustine, Eriugena, and Abelard. Florilegium 13: 37–52.

CHAPTER 4

Exegetical Form: The Eccentric Exegesis of the Homilies

I now turn to a collection of texts that is not part of the books of visions (although Hildegard did say that all of her texts flowed from her visionary mode of seeing and thinking). I will discuss the exegetical strategies employed in her collection of Homilies on the Gospels, the Expositiones Evangeliorum, because it demonstrates a peculiar treatment of the biblical text that can shed new light on how allegoresis functions in the visions as well. This collection is the only text of biblical exegesis that we have of Hildegard, excepting two commentaries that are part of the books of visions.1 It is also the only systematic work of exegesis by any medieval woman. Hildegard’s Expositiones Evangeliorum contain fifty-eight homilies that Hildegard probably delivered to her sisters in the chapter house of the Rupertsberg monastery.2 The homilies expound twenty-seven gospel pericopes used in the liturgy on Sundays and feast days.3 After a short introduction of the homilies’ characteristics, I will first talk about their structure and narrative coherence. Second, I will discuss the method used 1  Hildegard of Bingen, Opera Minora I, ed. Hugh Feiss et  al., CCCM 226 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). 2  Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Hildegard of Bingen and Her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 3. See also her introduction to Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, trans. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Cistercian Studies 241 (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2011). 3  Kienzle, Gospel Homilies, 3.

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to connect the meanings of source text and interpretation. I want to read the homilies as the mirror image of the allegory in the books of visions. The allegoresis of the homilies is remarkable for the way in which it intertwines itself with the biblical text that it explains. I argue that the same dynamics are at work in this text as in the books of visions, and that the homilies try to transfer the allegorical element of simultaneous double reference onto allegoresis.

Creative Allegoresis in the Expositiones The Expositiones are strikingly original in both content and form. Regarding content, the exegetical interpretations offered in this work are at times highly idiosyncratic. Peter Dronke writes that “this brief, neglected work contains many perceptions of such originality and profundity that it can in my view be seen as the fitting counterpart, in prose, to the lyrical Symphonia which Hildegard was shaping in the same years […].”4 They were highly appreciated by her direct audience as well. One time when Hildegard was on a preaching journey, her secretary Volmar wrote to her in a letter that the community would sorely miss her homilies, among other things, if she were to leave them for ever. He writes, “Vbi tunc noui et inauditi sermones in festis sanctorum?” suggesting that the homilies sounded strange even to the ears of their intended audience.5 Their form is no less special. They are written as a progressive exegesis of the biblical pericope. By progressive, I mean that each word or phrase of the gospel text alternates with a phrase of explanation. As Beverley Mayne Kienzle has pointed out, this method is very close to the technique of glossing. She calls Hildegard’s technique “intratextual glossing”: whereas glosses are normally placed outside the text, Hildegard brings them into the text, in order to connect them into a continuous narrative.6 Most commentators discuss larger phrases or several sentences at once, 4  Peter Dronke, “Platonic-Christian Allegories in the Homilies of Hildegard of Bingen,” in From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honor of Edward Jeauneau., ed. Haijo Jan Westra (Leiden, New York and Köln, 1992), 382. 5  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), 443 (letter 195). 6  Kienzle, Gospel Homilies, 115–31. Justin Stover sees a connection rather with the scholastic form of catena-commentary: Justin A.  Stover, “Hildegard, the Schools, and Their Critics,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Kienzle, George Ferzoco, and Debra Stoudt (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 124.

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with little coherence between the separate discussions. Hildegard, however, constructs a running narrative of smaller phrases that follow each other in quick succession.7 As an example, I cite the first sentences of the seventh homily, which reads the nativity story in parallel to the story of creation. In the following quotation, I have put the biblical text in capital letters: EXIIT EDICTUM, id est antiquum consilium, A CESARE AUGUSTO, scilicet a superno patre, UT DESCRIBERETUR, id est ut procederet, UNIUERSUS ORBIS, uidelicet omnis creatura. HAEC DESCRIPTIO PRIMA, id est creatio, FACTA EST A PRESIDE SIRIAE, CIRINO, scilicet per uerbum patris, quod erat caput omnis formationis et quod etiam incarnandum erat. ET IBANT OMNES, scilicet unaqueque creatura, UT PROFITERENTUR SINGULI IN SUAM CIUITATEM, uidelicet ut perficerent inicium suum secundum naturam suam, UT EIS IN OFFICIO SUO CONSTITUTUM ERAT, id est eundo, natando, uolando. A DECREE WAS ISSUED, that is, the ancient counsel, BY CAESAR AUGUSTUS, namely by the heavenly father, THAT A CENSUS SHOULD BE TAKEN, namely that would come forth, THE ENTIRE WORLD, namely every creature. THIS WAS THE FIRST CENSUS, creation namely, THAT TOOK PLACE WHILE QUIRINIUS WAS GOVERNOR OF SYRIA, namely through the word of the father, which was the principle of the formation of everything and that would itself be incarnated. AND EVERYONE WENT, namely every single creature, TO THEIR OWN TOWN, namely so that they would accomplish their beginning according to their nature, AS IT WAS THEIR OBLIGATION, namely by walking, swimming, and flying. [Biblical text changed to capitals]8

It takes a concentrated listener and one who knows the gospel text by heart to be able to follow the two narratives simultaneously and keep them apart. However, the two narratives are also meant to be read together. They are combined into a single sentence structure, and Hildegard sometimes modifies the Bible text so that the second narrative might fit in better.9 Formally, the particular kind of gloss that might come closest to this kind of exegesis is the habit of troping in liturgy. Troping is the practice of adding new verses to contextualise the psalm text for the specific occasion  Kienzle, Gospel Homilies, 123.  Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, Opera Minora I, CCCM 226 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 205. 9  Kienzle, Gospel Homilies, 121. 7 8

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of the Mass. Tropes sometimes preface the psalm text that is sung for the introit, but they also often insert themselves between the verses, creating a new syntactic structure. An example is the following introit trope: O nova res, en virgo venit, partum gerit, et nos SUSCEPIMUS, DEUS, MISERICORDIAM TUAM, Quod non visuri patres cupiere, videmus IN MEDIO TEMPLI TUI Rex pie Christe, tuum sit nomen semper honestum SECUNDUM NOMEN TUUM, ITA ET LAUS TUA IN FINES TERRAE, IUSTITIA PLENA EST DEXTERA TUA. O novel thing, behold, a virgin comes bearing a child, and we WE HAVE RECEIVED YOUR MERCY, O GOD We see what the fathers desired but were not to see IN THE MIDST OF YOUR TEMPLE. O king, merciful Christ, may your name be ever honored AS YOUR NAME DOES, O GOD, SO TOO MAY YOUR PRAISE GO TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH; YOUR RIGHT HAND IS FULL WITH JUSTICE.10

The trope not only creates a new syntactic structure but also gives new meaning to the old song. It performs an allegorical exegesis by weaving references to Mary and Christ into the old-testament psalm. It seems that Hildegard adopts this liturgical technique for writing exegesis on a larger scale. Justin Stover has further pointed out the similarity between Hildegard’s glossing technique and a method of exposition developed by northern French schoolmasters such as Bernard of Chartres and William of Conches for the purpose of commenting on ancient texts.11 Like Hildegard, they merge the words of the commented text and those of the commentator. We will see, however, that Hildegard applies the method in a more strict way. Stover concludes that we might have to situate Hildegard’s method more in a scholastic than a monastic context, but I would rather argue that  Susan Boynton and Margot Fassler, “The Language, Form, and Performance of Monophonic Liturgical Chants,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph Jay Hexter and David Townsend (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 386. Translation from same source. 11  Stover, “Hildegard, the Schools, and Their Critics,” 124. 10

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this is a case where old and new practices together create something new, or where a shared need leads to similar solutions, as we will also see with respect to other topics in later chapters.

Multiple Interpretations and Narrative Continuity My analysis will first discuss the level of narrative and then that of the word. To begin with narrative, Hildegard develops multiple interpretations of the same biblical pericope. Most of the biblical stories that she treats receive one allegorical and one tropological reading in separate homilies. This method resembles that of Gregory the Great. The moral interpretation follows the allegorical interpretation.12 The moral signification is therefore not restricted to the casuistic treatment of the story at hand, but is derived only after the story has been made significant in light of the story of Christianity. We will see that in Hildegard’s exegesis as well, moralitas is viewed not only as the ultimate goal of scriptural interpretation but also as the motor of history. Furthermore, we will see that she shares with Gregory a certain disregard for the literal, and “a free-play of signification at the allegorical level en route to tropology.”13 Peter Dronke refers to these two categories of allegorical and tropological meanings respectively as “cosmological” and “psychological.”14 This is because he analyses Hildegard’s exegesis of the gospels as the construction of new allegorical “fables,” in the platonic tradition, thus oddly situating them more within the field of the allegoresis of classical fabulae and the writing of cosmological allegory than within the field of biblical exegesis. He says: “At times they show Hildegard constructing fables of the creation of the world and of mankind, in the fabulatory mode that she knew from the Calcidian Timaeus; at others she constructs fables of the microcosm, in a mode that she knew through early Christian Platonists such as Origen and Ambrose.”15  Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’écriture (Paris: Aubier, 1959), 554.  DeGregorio, Scott, “Gregory’s Exegesis: Old and New Ways of Approaching the Scriptural Text,” in A Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. Bronwen Neil and Matthew Dal Santo (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 289. 14  Dronke, “Platonic-Christian Allegories,” 383, 387. 15  Dronke, 387. Peter Dronke generally ascribes to Hildegard a much larger intellectual baggage than most scholars would. Cf., Peter Dronke, “The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 1–16. 12 13

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Joop van Banning argues against Dronke that the Expositiones should be analysed first and foremost as biblical exegesis and therefore according to the fourfold levels of meaning.16 He writes: “In the twelfth century, the interpretation of Scripture according to the four senses of Scripture was widespread, and Hildegard seems to have taken this method for granted.”17 Although I agree with Banning that we should first analyse these texts as biblical exegesis, I believe that van Banning’s desire to fit the homilies into a fourfold schema sometimes leads to forced categorisations. The problem is most apparent in the cases where there are more than two explanations of one pericope. Van Banning’s assumption is that each new explanation takes place on a new exegetical level.18 With Dronke reading the homilies as the construction of fabulistic allegories, and van Banning reading them as a strict exegesis along the four levels of interpretation, the question arises how the text enables such diverse interpretations. My own reading, in which I follow Kienzle’s lead, will steer a course between these two extremes. First, I will show that a distinction between literal and allegorical readings cannot be made on the basis of the criterion of loyalty to the text’s intention but should be based on a formal criterion. Second, I will show that the different explanations of one pericope do not adhere to one schema but are not random either. Rather, they follow a narrative logic based on a double movement: that of the periods of salvation history, on the one hand, and interiorisation, on the other. A Formal Definition for the Literal Level First, let us look at the role played by the concept of the literal in this practice of exegesis. Hildegard is known for making almost no use of historical interpretation. She does not discuss the history of words, names, or persons. Moreover, as Kienzle notes, it is remarkable that “[a]lthough keenly interested in science and healing, she does not probe nature with

16  Joop van Banning, “Hildegard von Bingen als Theologin in ihren Predigten,” in Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst, ed. Rainer Berndt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 243–68. 17  van Banning, 246. “Im 12. Jahrhundert war die Schriftauslegung nach den vier Schriftsinnen weitverbreitet, und Hildegard scheint diese Methode als selbstverständlich anzusehen.” 18  van Banning, 246.

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any scientific explanation.”19 These kinds of interpretations do not occur in the Homilies. However, what she does do sometimes is to elucidate the inner logic of a story and the motivation behind what happens. We find this, for instance, in the exegesis of the annunciation to Joseph (Expositio 5), where Hildegard explains that God wanted Mary to marry because it is right that every pregnant woman should have a husband to take care of her, as well as to make sure that she would not become presumptuous about not needing a husband.20 Further, she explains that Joseph saw the angel in a dream and not while being awake because of the fact that Joseph did not have “the spirit of prophecy.”21 Further clear examples of historical exegesis are Expositio 24 on the temptation in the wilderness and Expositio 53 on the prophecy of the fig tree. Van Banning considers three more homilies as examples of literal exegesis, but here I think he is mistaken.22 In each case, Van Banning calls the exegesis literal because the interpretation stays close to the apparent meaning of the biblical text. For instance, in the allegory of the good shepherd, Jesus himself declares that he is the good shepherd. Indeed, Hildegard’s first exegesis (Expositio 30) does not do much more than expound this metaphor. Van Banning therefore categorises this exegesis as literal, because his criterion for a literal exegesis is that it is close to the text. Admittedly, Hildegard’s allegorical exegeses are normally miles away from the narrative logic of the pericope. So there is indeed a contrast here. However, I think this contrast distracts from a more important issue. Van Banning criticises Hildegard for “taking the liberty of a poet and developing interpretations that have little to do with the original goal of the parable.”23 Banning’s reproach is that Hildegard does not care about preserving the link between text and interpretation. I would counter this by  Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, 95.  Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, 5 (p. 203); van Banning, “Hildegard von Bingen als Theologin in ihren Predigten,” 261. 21  Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, 5 (p. 204). 22  Kienzle only rejects Expositio 30 as literal-historical exegesis: Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, 99. She says: “Van Banning considers Hildegard’s interpretation in this homily as literal-historical with a focus on the incarnation. I agree that the homily has an incarnational focus. However, I see a consistent allegory in that the biblical characters represent something other than themselves. The magistra arrives at history through the means of allegory in order to relate one of the principal events of salvation history: the incarnation. That use of allegory argues for considering this exposition among Hildegard’ s allegorical readings of Scripture.” 23  van Banning, “Hildegard von Bingen als Theologin in ihren Predigten,” 254. 19 20

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saying that Hildegard does care about this link, but on a different level than that of the narration. While the explanations might usually wander from the narrative logic of the text, there is another aspect in which they preserve a connection to the text, namely through the exegetical method. By means of her method of intratextual glossing, Hildegard connects the two texts not through narrative logic but through an interconnected series of metaphors and other reference relations. This method knits the biblical text and its allegorical exegesis together, by focusing on individual words and metaphoric transpositions. Its most obvious marker is the use of connection words like “scilicet,” “id est,” “videlicet” (“namely,” “this means”), and the like. The use of this method marks the difference between the homilies with literal exegesis and the exegesis of the Good Shepherd. The first two sentences of the Good Shepherd exegesis read like this: Ego, uerbum patris, sum pastor, scilicet creator bonus creaturarum, quia omnes de me procedunt et ego eas omnes in plenitudine pasco. Bonus pastor animam suam, scilicet uitam qua omnia suscitauit, dat, ponendo in corporali forma, pro ouibus suis, id est electis. I, the word of the father, am the shepherd, namely the good creator of creatures, because all of them come from me and I let them graze on plentiful fields. A good shepherd gives his soul, namely the life that rouses everything, by placing it in a bodily form for his sheep, namely the chosen ones.24

Note the sustained replacement of terms: “pastor, scilicet creator bonus,” “animam suam, scilicet uitam,” “pro ouibus suis, id est electis.” This substitution is something that does not occur in the literal exegesis. The exegesis does more than explain terms; it creates a new level of meaning. This is the characteristic of allegorical exegesis. It is by use of this method that Hildegard signals a spiritual exegesis, not by close adherence to the narrative logic. A Narrative Definition for the Senses of Scripture I will now analyse some cases where more than two homilies explain a specific gospel story. I will discuss the way in which interpretations relate to each other, hoping to show in the process that the Expositiones do not  Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, 30 (p. 274).

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apply the three- or fourfold method of exegesis as a set of categories, but as a set of ideas. Because van Banning tries to locate each homily in a different category, he overlooks the coherence and internal development of each series of homilies. Dronke hints at this coherence in his analysis of Expositiones 7 and 8 on the birth of Christ. He remarks how the second reading “is an extension of the first rather than a fresh beginning.”25 Kienzle devotes part of her book to the way in which the theme of trinitarian theology in salvation history provides the structure for many of these series of homilies. She discovers that different interpretations of the same pericope are structured in a threefold, trinitarian way, with a focus on how the Trinity is manifested in history.26 She asserts that “[t]he theology of history so dominates the content of the Expositiones that the homilies deserve recognition as a major work on salvation history.”27 I propose to trace this narrative in the homilies consisting of more than two interpretations, while adding some extra dimensions to the trinitarian structure that Kienzle points out. While Kienzle focuses on Hildegard’s view of salvation history and parallels with other texts, I will concentrate on narrative structure. First, let us look at the series of explanations on Jesus’ discussion with the Pharisee Nicodemus (Expositiones 34, 35, and 36). Expositio 34 interprets the person of Nicodemus allegorically as the ‘pseudo-prophets,’ who are reputed to be wise but who want to look at God through words without works.28 Expositio 35 explains the discussion as the confrontation between evil and the supreme good, but in an abstract way: Erat, id est cognitum est, homo, scilicet malum, ex Phariseis, scilicet de recto, quia malum de bono cognoscitur, Nichodemus nomine, quod est nichil, quia per illud ea quae sunt bona et iusta cognoscuntur et probantur. Hic uenit ad Iesum, uidelicet ad summum bonum, nocte, scilicet in odio et in inuidia, et dixit ei, temptando […]. [Emphasis added] There was, that is: there came to be known, a man, namely evil, from among the Pharisees, namely from the good, because evil is known by means of good, bearing the name Nicodemus, which is nothing, because through what is nothing is recognised and shown what is good and right. This man

 Dronke, “Platonic-Christian Allegories,” 387.  Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, 163. 27  Hildegard of Bingen, 197. 28  Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, 34 (p. 279). 25 26

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came to Jesus, namely to the supreme good, at night, namely full of spite and jealousy, and said to him, taunting him […].29

The last homily, Expositio 36, is a tropological explanation in which the individual sinner encounters penitence. These three homilies thus all develop the same theme, which is that evil originates in the good and is only the negation of what is good. First, we see how this works in history: false prophets “come out of the group of real prophets” and know God but fail to look at him in the right way.30 Second, we see how this works on an abstract plane: evil is nothing; it only ‘is’ in the sense that the good is known in contrast to it. Third, we see what this means for the individual psychology: if evil is but the absence of good, sinners can leave their sins behind them through true penitence. This is my first modification of Kienzle’s structure: progression within the interpretations does not only follow salvation history but also involves an internalisation from collective history to the individual psyche. This method of allegoresis follows the tradition of Gregory the Great, for whom moral insight and improvement are the main goal of interpreting the Bible allegorically. Next, we turn to the homilies on the miraculous catch of fish (43, 44, and 45). What Hildegard’s exegesis retains from the story of an unexpected good catch is the shift from a bad state to a good state. Expositio 43 analyses the story as a quick overview of the entire Old Testament: Jesus stepping into the boat is the act of creation, the throwing of the nets is the fall of humankind, and the conversion that follows is the conversion to the New Law. Expositio 44 starts out where the previous homily ended and gives a summary of the New Testament: Christ becomes human, teaches, and is brought to death; he has a conversation with his father about the possibility of salvation, and we witness the conversion of many good Christians. Expositio 45, lastly, describes the third step in the work of salvation, which is the conversion and salvation of the individual soul, when the virtues (the crowd) turn to fortitude (Christ). These three exegeses are not so much recounting the same narrative on different levels as continuing it in time. Together, they recount the whole of salvation history. The repetition of the biblical text in each of the explanations follows the cycles of wrongdoing, remorse, and conversion that occur in each period. One could of course object that the third exegesis is situated at a different level,  Hildegard of Bingen, 35 (p. 283).  Hildegard of Bingen, 34 (p. 279).

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the tropological, but at the same time, the tropological level characterises the period of salvation history after the incarnation. Taken together with the macrocosm-microcosm structure, which Peter Dronke pointed out in a different set of homilies, we recognise the same encompassing system that structures the visions: vertically, the relation of microcosm to macrocosm, and horizontally, the different periods of salvation history. Hildegard shares the preference of her time for broad representations of the whole system of micro- and macrocosmos and the whole of salvation history. This system does not replace the fourfold system of meaning, but it subsumes it and uses it in its own greater narrative. A similar narrative is present in Expositiones 46, 47, and 48, where Jesus expels the moneychangers from the temple. The unifying theme is the perversion and restoration of human knowledge through time. The first homily interprets the pericope in terms of God’s warning not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and laments humanity’s failure to heed this warning. The homily ends with the incarnation (Jesus stepping into the temple), which will bring new knowledge. The second homily is about this spiritual transformation of the Old Law into the New, and the third homily describes how this transformation should also affect the hearts of people. Lastly, we come to the four homilies on the fig tree prophecy (53, 54, 55, and 56), in which van Banning recognised the only complete fourfold exegesis of Hildegard’s Expositiones. In the prophecy of the fig tree (Lucas 21), Jesus predicts the signs that will mark the end of times. Just as you know that summer has arrived when you see that the fig tree produces fruit, you will know that the end is near when you see the signs. The relation of the different interpretations to each other is roughly similar to that between Expositiones 34 and 35, where we had an interpretation that looked at the developments in salvation history and an interpretation that looked at those same developments from a more abstract point of view. Both homilies describe the events at the end of times, although not the actual second coming of Christ, because Christ is seen here arriving only “in the minds of the faithful.” They rather describe the attitude that people assume in these last days, which will determine their fate at the end. I see two movements running through the four expositions: one is internalisation and the other a reverse chronology of events. We start with the literal reading, which recounts the actual second coming as it will be: “Et tunc uidebunt in iudicio filium hominis, Christum, uenientem in nube, blanda et terribili, cum potestate magna humanitatis,

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et maiestate diuinitatis” (“At that time they will see in judgment the son of man, Christ, coming in a cloud, a gentle and terrible cloud, with the great power of humanity and the majesty of divinity”).31 The two subsequent allegorical readings are respectively about martyrdom and about prophecy and miracles. While these occurrences are both frequent during the end times, the former is more concerned with historical events and the war against the church, thus leaning towards the historical level, and the latter is more concerned with inner virtues and understanding of the future, tending more towards the psychological. In both interpretations, the second coming is situated “in mentibus.” Expositio 54 speaks of both “sight and insight”: Et tunc, in his omnibus, uidebunt et uisu et intellectu filium hominis, scilicet Christum, uenientem in nube, uidelicet in mentibus fidelium, qui multas passiones et tribulationes pro Christo et ueritate in martirio pacientur, cum potestate magna sanctae incarnationis et maiestate diuinitatis, ita ut fideles antichristum abnegantes, ipsum uerum Deum et hominem cognoscant. [Emphasis added] At that time, in all these, they will see with both sight and insight the son of man, namely Christ, coming in a cloud, namely in the minds of the faithful, who will suffer many sufferings and troubles for Christ and the truth as martyrs, with the great power of the holy incarnation and the majesty of divinity, so that the faithful would reject the Antichrist and would recognise him as the true God-man.32

Expositio 55, on the other hand, is focused on the understanding of the second coming through prophecy and miracle: Et tunc uidebunt in prophetia et miraculis, filium hominis, scilicet Christum, uenientem in rumore in mundum, in nube, uidelicet in mentibus hominum et in umbra prophetiae, cum potestate magna miraculorum et misteriorum et maiestate tacti per diuinitatem. [Emphasis added] And then they will see in prophecy and miracles the son of man, namely Christ, coming into the world by hearsay, in a cloud, namely in the minds of people and in the shadow of prophecy, with great power of miracles and mysteries and with majesty, touched by divinity.33  Hildegard of Bingen, 53 (p. 322).  Hildegard of Bingen, 54 (p. 323). 33  Hildegard of Bingen, 55 (p.  325). The use of the phrase “in umbra prophetiae” is unique to Hildegard. 31 32

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The last homily offers an explanation of the way in which these virtues and vices are active in every single individual and teaches that Christ has already arrived in the person “in whom the virtues are already born”: Et tunc uidebunt ueraci signo filium hominis, scilicet iam natas in homine uirtutes, uenientem in nube, uidelicet in pupillam scientiae, cum potestate magna, omnes tenebras deprimendo, et maiestate, cum bonum malum uincit. And then they will see in a truthful sign the son of man, namely the virtues that are already born in a person, coming in a cloud, namely in the pupil of knowledge, with great power, by suppressing all obscurities, and with majesty, when good defeats evil.34

We again encounter one of the structuring principles of the Expositiones, namely that salvation history ultimately progresses in the individual psyche. What we see in these four readings of the fig tree passage is that the literal and the tropological reach out to each other through the allegorical readings in between. All of the readings are part of the same event, namely the last days leading up to the second coming. The three readings that follow the literal one all progress from the physical and communal towards the more internal and individual, from the physical and collective (martyrdom) over the intellectual (prophecy and miracles) to the psychological and individual (virtue). Simultaneously, they characterise different stages of the last days in reverse order, as they are recounted in the last vision of Liber divinorum operum: first, the decline of virtue (III,5,15), second, the time of prophecy (III,5,26), and third, the time of martyrdom (III,5,33 and 37). In sum, on the one hand, tropology is not just one of the exegetical categories but also a gradual movement through the cycle of explanations. On the other hand, the historical actuality of the literal extends, in the opposite direction, to the allegorical and tropological exegeses. Kienzle concluded with regard to the structure of the homilies that “Hildegard follows no explicit threefold or fourfold pattern as she comments on the pericopes included in the Expositiones, yet there are subtle patterns at work which point beyond any sort of instantaneous interpretation of the texts.”35 I have attempted to trace the most important of these subtle patterns. The structuring principles of the Expositiones make use of the categories of literal, allegorical/ecclesiastical, and tropological  Hildegard of Bingen, 56 (p. 328).  Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, 93.

34 35

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interpretation, but they are not equivalent to them. It is rather the ideas that are also at the basis of the schema of three- or fourfold exegesis that inform the structure of the homilies. The most important of these ideas is temporality and the progress of salvation through history, as Kienzle has already pointed out. We are more used to seeing temporality at play between the literal and the allegorical categories, where the literal typologically foreshadows the allegorical. In Hildegard’s texts, however, when a timeline is created within the exegesis, it is between two or three allegorical interpretations. Further, the anagogical does not have to be present as a separate category in this schema, because it is always the endpoint of both the allegorical and the tropological level. Both are always implicitly situated in time. Moreover, multiple allegorical meanings often correspond to multiple periods in salvation history. Within this temporal scheme, the individual, tropological level characterises the post-incarnation period. The second idea is that salvation takes place on multiple levels simultaneously: the historically concrete, the ideationally abstract, and the psychologically individual level. The fig tree homilies beautifully demonstrate this: the literal level is situated in the future, and the entwined historical, ideational, and psychological factors are at work to realise this future outcome. I agree with Kienzle that “the broad concept of spiritual interpretation,” inherited from Paul and the Church Fathers, is more important than the distinction between typology, allegory, tropology, and anagogy: “Hildegard, like other twelfth-century monastic writers, viewed both the Bible and the world as a composite of signs that acquired their real meaning only through spiritual interpretation.”36 This “symbolist mentality” provides a much better frame in which to situate Hildegard’s exegesis than more rigorous categories.37 Kienzle writes: “For Hildegard as for her predecessors, the notion of ‘spiritual understanding’ encompasses both the frequent use of typology and tropology and the conviction that the hidden meaning of Scripture, revealed by spiritual interpretation, surpasses the literal or historical sense.”38 36  Hildegard of Bingen, 93; de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 405. “Il n’y a donc au fond, partout reconnu dans la tradition ancienne, qu’un double sens de l’Écriture : l’un, qui consiste dans l’histoire, ou dans la lettre; l’autre, qu’on nomme plus généralement spirituel, ou allégorique, ou mystique.” 37  Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1976). 38  Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, 93.

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At the same time, the homilies are anything but loosely structured. We find that they are situated within the same dimensions of cosmological salvation history that we see in the books of visions. Not only do they comment on the Bible, they also adopt the whole scope of its narration, beginning with creation and ending at the brink of the Last Judgment, as the books of visions also do. Each group of homilies, however far they seem removed from the biblical text, are strung together into one thematically and narratively coherent unity.

Creating a Narrative To recapitulate, Hildegard’s method resembles glossing, but goes beyond it in creating a continuous narrative on the level of the sentence, of the single interpretation, and of a series of interpretations. First, the exegete creates narrative sequences at the sentence level by connecting the metaphors that she finds in the object text. Her glosses are not stand-alone explanations of words or phrases. Each of these glosses connects to the previous and the next one, combining into one narrative. This is why Peter Dronke views her commentaries as a form of independent allegory. All of the metaphors that she develops are connected, so that “one could say that for Hildegard in this work each allegory functions as a single extended or sustained metaphor,” which is Quintilian’s classical definition of allegory.39 Second, she creates a coherent narrative interpretation for each pericope. Kienzle points out how three features differentiate the homilies “from many, if not most, extant monastic sermons”: “the deliberately progressive, almost word-by-word exegesis; the construction of a coherent narrative in the commentary; and the frequent extension of the voice of the biblical characters.”40 Kienzle then looks for similar features elsewhere, asking the question of whether “any monastic commentator follow[s] a method of exegesis that resembles the magistra’s tropological story-­ telling?”41 She finds an answer in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Parabolae: Bernard of Clairvaux spins a moral tale that weaves phrases from the Lukan pericope into one of his Parabolae, a collection of texts that resemble lengthy exempla, the short illustrative anecdotes that medieval preachers employed  Dronke, “Platonic-Christian Allegories,” 383.  Kienzle, Gospel Homilies, 151–52. 41  Kienzle, 130. 39 40

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to illustrate and lighten their sermons. Unlike the exempla, however, the Parabolae of Bernard stand on their own as independent narratives.42

The best form with which to compare Hildegard’s homiletic exegesis, then, is already more allegorical than exegetical. Kienzle adds: “the telling of parabola based on gospel stories bears comparison to the taste for narrative that scholars have signalled in medieval commentaries on the Song of Songs.”43 Kienzle characterises Hildegard’s exegetical narrative as “dramatic narrative exegesis.”44 On the one hand, this means that “she gives biblical characters a voice that extends beyond the scriptural text.”45 On the other hand, she also extends her own voice into the scriptural text: “the blending of the magistra’s voice with that of the gospel text […] creates multi-­ level drama in which she engages as commentator and which contrasts significantly with the distance that most commentators take from the scriptural text.”46 This also contributes to the hierarchic reversal of object text and exegesis: “The hierarchy of commentary and Scripture, evident in the scripts and layouts of glossed Bibles where comments are compressed into the margins or between the lines disappears when all voices proceed simultaneously and occupy the same space on the page.”47 Third, this narrative continues across the borders of the separate homilies, framing each series of homilies as a continuous history of the cosmos and humankind from creation to the last day. Hildegard’s exegesis is driven by a desire for coherence between single words, phrases, and metaphors and for narrative continuity at a thematic scale. What is left out is the level in between, that is, the narrative continuity of the object text, or, in other words, exactly what is normally the object of exegesis. Monastic lectio is a reading of the narrative tenor of a biblical text in order to project this tenor onto other levels of meaning. Precisely this aspect completely disintegrates in Hildegard’s exegesis. At the other end of the spectrum from lectio is glossing, but individual glosses never strove to be coherent,  Kienzle, 130.  Kienzle, 130. 44  Kienzle, 132–37; Beverly Mayne Kienzle, “Hildegard of Bingen’s Gospel Homilies and Her Exegesis of the Parable of the Prodigal Son,” in Im Angesicht Gottes Suche Der Mensch Sich Selbst, ed. Rainer Berndt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 343–74. 45  Kienzle, Gospel Homilies, 132. 46  Kienzle, 152. 47  Kienzle, 152. 42 43

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let alone form a narrative. What we see in Hildegard’s text, however, is an exegesis that completely disregards the internal connections of the object text while it creates its own narrative, but which does so by using the exact words and phrases of the object text. It operates on both a small scale and a very large scale, both independent of the object text as a structure and very dependent on it for its own building blocks. The key to how this exegesis functions must be at the intersection of this paradoxical situation, namely the exegetical method.

Exegetical Method: The Miraculous Catch of Allegory? The idea of narrative exegesis is pretty much the opposite of glossing. So why does Hildegard use a method that is so close to glossing? How exactly does she produce meaning through chopping the text into bits? I will answer this question through a closer analysis of the three expositiones on Luke 5, 1–11: the miraculous catch of fish. These homilies have received the numbers 43, 44, and 45 in the manuscript. Let us begin with the first sentence of Homily 43: CUM TURBAE, id est materia creaturarum, IRRUERENT, scilicet properarent, IN IESUM, ad Deum, UT AUDIRENT UERBUM DEI, uidelicet sonum illum, ubi Deus dixit fiat. WHEN THE CROWDS, that is: the matter of the creatures, RUSHED, namely hastened, TO JESUS, to God, SO THAT THEY WOULD HEAR THE WORD OF GOD, namely the sound of God saying ‘let there be.’48

What does the exegesis gain by interweaving the biblical text with its explanation? What would be different had Hildegard quoted the bible and then written: “id est: cum materia creaturarum properarent ad Deum ut audirent sonum illum ubi Deus dixit fiat” (“that is: when the matter of the creatures hastened to God so that they would hear the sound of God saying ‘let there be’”)? As Kienzle has pointed out, the exegesis complements the biblical text and builds upon it in order to produce its narrative. Two kinds of “glosses” are used: substitution by means of “id est,” “scilicet,” or videlicet,” and addition, mostly by means of dependent clauses. Especially the latter  Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, 43 (p. 305).

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allows the two discourses to fall together. The sentence that I have quoted only makes use of substitution, which makes it harder to perceive this. But if we look at Expositio 44, the first sentence reads: CUM TURBAE, scripturarum, IRRUERENT, demonstrando, IN IESUM, id est Deum, UT AUDIRENT, in studio, UERBUM DEI, ita ut eum incarnandum scirent et ostenderent [...]. WHEN THE CROWDS of scriptures RUSHED, by demonstration, TO JESUS, that is: God, SO THAT THEY WOULD HEAR, through study, THE WORD OF GOD, and know that he would become human and show […].49

Here, the exegesis uses addition almost exclusively. Leave out the edition’s commas and you get one continuous sentence. Arguably, the same goes for substitution glosses, although a little more effort is required. We could read the first sentence of Homily 43 as “the masses of uncreated matter hasten to Jesus, who is also God, to hear the word of God ordering them into being.” The sentence following this one is also a nice example: ET IPSE, Deus, STABAT, quasi ad operandum, SECUS STAGNUM GENESARETH, ubi Spiritus Domini ferebatur super aquas. AND HE, God, STOOD, as if to act, BY THE LAKE OF GENESARETH, where the spirit of God hovered over the waters.50

Without the commas of the modern edition, it is possible to read this sentence as one semantic unity.51 The exegesis, then, does not reside on a level separate from the biblical text. On the contrary, it folds itself into the syntax and the semantics of the object text. This complementariness of bible text and exegesis has certain advantages. To demonstrate this, let us look at another sentence. Jesus steps into the boat: ASCENDENS AUTEM, in prouidentia sua, IN UNAM NAUIM, scilicet creaturam, QUAE ERAT SIMONIS, scilicet hominis, ROGAUIT EUM, ostendendo, UT A TERRA, uidelicet ab aliis creaturis, REDUCERET  Hildegard of Bingen, 44 (p. 307).  Hildegard of Bingen, 43 (p. 305). 51  The use of interpunction in the manuscripts is restricted to full and medial stops and question marks. Hildegard of Bingen, Opera Minora I, 174. 49 50

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PUSILLUM, ita ut homo in dignitate aliis prelatus esset. ET SEDENS in maiestate, DOCEBAT, ordinando, DE NAUICULA, id est in racionalitate quam homini dederat, TURBAS. HE CLIMBED, in his providence, INTO A BOAT, namely a creature, BELONGING TO SIMON, namely to humans, AND ASKED HIM, by showing, THAT HE WOULD ROW AWAY FROM THE LAND, namely from the other creatures, A SHORT DISTANCE, so that humans would be superior to other creatures in dignity. THEN HE SAT DOWN in majesty AND TAUGHT THE CROWDS, by ordering, FROM THE BOAT, that is: in the rationality which he gave to people.52

To start at the beginning, “ascendere in navim” is to climb in a ship, but “ascendere” in combination with “in providentia sua” refers not only to God’s rising above humanity in his providence but also towards the creature, “in creaturam.” Taking “in unam navim, scilicet creaturam” together, knowing that this creature is humankind, “hominis,” we could read this as pointing forward to Jesus climbing into the vessel of the human body. Thus, the combination of discourses gives rise to a multitude of interconnected meanings. In this particular instance, Hildegard uses her method of intratextual glossing to deal with the paradoxical issue of divine providence and free will. Although she does not treat these questions, they are clearly strongly present in the commentary when we read that God “asked” humanity to choose the right course by “showing them” (“rogavit ostendendo”) and that he “taught” people “by ordering their rationality” (“docebat ordinando, de navicula, id est in rationalitate”), “which he had given to them.” Here, Hildegard walks the tight rope between God ordering and teaching, asking to follow the preordained right course, giving them the faculty by which they can choose what they should choose. In sum, the interweaving of elements creates the possibility of semantic multiplicity in the narrative. But the narrative in which this semantic multiplicity is created is not that of the object text. Cut into small parts, the object text loses its coherence at the same time that its allegorical interpretation gains it. When the interwoven structure of the text goads us into reading only one narrative, we lose sight of the biblical text. The example of Expositio 43 shows that even the most basic meanings of the object text can be abandoned. The main narrative dynamic in the story of the miraculous catch of fish is the shift from the fishermen’s  Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, 43 (p. 305).

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reluctance to let down their nets again to their elation when they see their huge catch. In Hildegard’s exegesis, on the contrary, the letting down of the nets is interpreted as the fall into sin, and the surprising catch of fish turns into a nasty catch of vices. Not even the basic opposition of doubt and belief or good and bad survives in the commentary. As I have argued above, this does not mean that the link with the object text is arbitrary. However, it is not located on the level of narrative but on the level of the word or phrase. There, a multitude of possible verbal links is activated in order to weave a new pattern from the threads that were torn loose from the object text. For instance, the word “turbae” at the very beginning reminds of chaos and so refers to the chaos of uncreated matter. When they “hasten to hear the word of God,” this Word of God must stand for creation. God stands next to the lake Genesareth, a name that reminds of ‘Genesis.’ The two ships at the lakeside are the elements and the creatures, respectively, which stand beside the lake “quoniam de aqua sunt quasi volatiles temperatae.”53 They “stand” because they have been brought to stability (“temperatae”), from their previous state, which was volatile as water; therefore, they now stand next to the water of the lake (“stantes secus stagnum”). The exegesis is composed of these small building blocks, almost all of them metaphoric. So, even if Hildegard disregards the commonly accepted rule that the literal-historical sense is the foundation of the exegetical building, her exegesis is not built on sand either. Rather, it builds stone for stone with the words of the text and their referential potential. In doing so, how close does the text come to being allegory? In its relation to the biblical text, the exegesis borrows a set of strategies from allegory. The exegesis takes the words of the object text and makes them into metaphors. Then, it narrates a new story by linking all of these together. To create a pattern of tropes and make it into a narrative is also what allegory does. In usual exegetical practice, the difference between the two would still be clear, because the exegetical text would stand next to its object text and point out its borrowings. Hildegard’s exegesis, however, claims the object text as its own and uses it to establish itself. It still points out its method of transfer by pointing out that “this is that” (“id est”), but the object text does no longer exist as a separate text. The exegesis is not an explanation, and therefore it no longer is exegesis. 53  Hildegard of Bingen, 43 (p. 305), “because they are from water like something volatile that has been stabilised.”

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But is it therefore allegory? We must not confuse the construction of a narrative with the writing of allegory. The product of Hildegard’s exegetical weaving is a narrative that tells its story in highly metaphorical terms. But the metaphor is only metaphor. Its literal level does not make up the story, as happens in allegorical narrative. We can only say that the homiletic narrative is allegorical if we are still able to read the biblical narrative simultaneously with the commentary’s narrative. In that case, even if the allegory also uses exegesis in the shape of substitution glosses, there are enough points at which two meanings are projected at the same time. But is this really a possibility in, for instance, the following sentence: “Cum turbae, scripturarum, irruerent, demonstrando, in Iesum, id est Deum, ut audirent, in studio, uerbum Dei, ita ut eum incarnandum scirent et ostenderent [...]”? The possibility that “turbae” would refer simultaneously to the crowd at the shores of the Lake of Galilee and Scripture is undone by the addition of “scripturarum.” There is only one narrative here, which uses the metaphors of the biblical text but otherwise suppresses its narrative. Ironically, Hildegard’s commentary is a perfect example of continued metaphor—but that does not make it allegory. It stands on the brink of becoming allegory, but structurally it remains allegoresis. One could of course argue that the biblical text is so well known that its narrative can never be suppressed by the commentary; it will always be in the biblically versed reader’s mind, where it will always be read together with the new narrative. In that case, the text would turn into allegory, albeit one with very little regard for one of its referential levels and for the narrative symmetry between the two lines of reference. The text can only be read as allegory through a deliberate mental effort not to drop the scriptural text. What Hildegard does in her exegesis of the gospels is miles away from what we would call ‘to give an explanation’ of a text. Her exegesis disregards the syntactic and narrative coherence of the object text in favour of opening up a multitude of semantic possibilities found within the word or word group. The exegetical narrative is not added to the biblical narrative as a comment. Rather, the biblical narrative is incorporated into the new narrative. The focus is thus not only on the exegetical narrative but also on the relations between the elements of both narratives. These vertical relations that link the biblical elements to their exegesis become more important than the horizontal relations that linked them to the biblical narrative. The exegesis takes the object text apart and then incorporates the parts into a new structure. This text hardly qualifies as allegoresis, because it

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disregards the object text to a large degree, but for the same reason it cannot be allegory. Both allegoresis and allegory need two lines of reference, and here there seems to be only one.

The Allegoresis of the Expositiones and the Allegory of the Visions I want to conclude by comparing the use of allegory and allegoresis in the homilies to that in the books of visions. The differences are obvious but the similarities even more so. First, let us look at the differences. Whereas the homiletic exegesis interweaves biblical text and exegesis, the vision keeps them strictly separated. Even when the allegoresis of the vision puts the two next to each other, the elements are not interwoven. Compare, for instance, the following examples. Expositiones: ET SEDENS in maiestate, DOCEBAT, ordinando, DE NAVICULA, id est in racionalitate quam homini dederat, TURBAS. Scivias: Vnde etiam, ut uides, MONS ISTE MAGNUS FERREUM COLOREM HABENS designat fortitudinem et stabilitatem aeternitatis regni Dei, quae nullo impulsu labentis mutabilitatis potest exterminari, ET SUPER IPSUM QUIDAM TANTAE CLARITATIS SEDENS, UT CLARITAS IPSIUS UISUM TUUM REUERBERET, ostendit in regno beatitudinis ipsum qui in fulgore indeficientis serenitatis toti orbi terrarum imperans superna diuinitate humanis mentibus incomprehensibilis est.54

The exegetical text, where we would expect two separate narratives, contains one allegorical narrative in which metaphorical and non-­metaphorical elements are interwoven. The allegorical vision text separates these two elements. There is a double separation: the allegorical vision is distinct from the allegoresis, and, within the allegoresis, they are closer together but not interwoven. However, the difference is not that the visionary exegesis proceeds with larger chunks of texts. On the contrary, both texts apply the same method of word-per-word transposition. In the vision texts as in the homilies, the basic element of exegesis is the individual word or phrase, which is the method of glossing. A gloss explains just one word by means of another 54  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), I, 1.

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word. In the definition by Hugh of Saint Victor, adopted from Isidore, “[glossa] vocem illam de cuius re quaeritur uno et singulari verbo designat, verbi gratia, ut conticescere est tacere” (“[a gloss] indicates with one single word what the word means of which one wants to know the meaning, for the sake of that word, for example: ‘conticescere’ means to be silent”).55 However, in both the homilies and the visions, these glosses are expected to line up coherently, a feature not belonging to the method of glossing but to full commentaries. In conclusion, there are remarkable parallels between the exegetical method in the homilies and in the visions. A focus on the individual word, which is characteristic of glossing, is joined with an effort to create a coherent and continuous narrative. In the chapter that follows, I will discuss how this structure meets its functional limits in the visions. In later chapters, I will come back to this focus on the individual word in order to link it to Hildegard’s ideas on language and cognition.

References van Banning, Joop. 2001. Hildegard von Bingen als Theologin in ihren Predigten. In Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst, ed. Rainer Berndt, 243–268. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Boynton, Susan, and Margot Fassler. 2012. The Language, Form, and Performance of Monophonic Liturgical Chants. In The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph Jay Hexter and David Townsend. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Chenu, Marie-Dominique. 1976. La théologie au douzième siècle. Paris: Vrin. DeGregorio, Scott. 2013. Gregory’s Exegesis: Old and New Ways of Approaching the Scriptural Text. In A Companion to Gregory the Great, ed. Bronwen Neil and Matthew Dal Santo, 269–290. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Dronke, Peter. 1992. Platonic-Christian Allegories in the Homilies of Hildegard of Bingen. In From Athens to Chartres: Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honor of Edward Jeauneau, ed. Haijo Jan Westra, 381–396. Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill. ———. 1998. The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems. In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett, 1–16. London: Warburg Institute.

55  Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi (Washington: The Catholic university press, 1939), IV, 16; Guy Lobrichon, “Une nouveauté: les gloses de la Bible,” in Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, ed. Guy Lobrichon and Pierre Riché (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 96.

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Hildegard of Bingen. 1978. Scivias. Edited by Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 43. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1993. Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR. Edited by Lieven Van Acker. CCCM 91B. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2007a. Expositiones Evangeliorum. Opera Minora I, CCCM 226. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2007b. Opera Minora I. Edited by Hugh Feiss, Christopher P.  Evans, Beverly Kienzle, Carolyn Muessig, Barbara Newman, and Peter Dronke. CCCM 226. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2011. Homilies on the Gospels. Translated by Beverly Mayne Kienzle. Cistercian Studies 241. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. Hugh of Saint Victor. 1939. Didascalicon de studio legendi. Edited by Charles Henry Buttimer. Washington: The Catholic University Press. Kienzle, Beverly Mayne. 2009. Hildegard of Bingen and Her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2001. Hildegard of Bingen’s Gospel Homilies and Her Exegesis of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst, ed. Rainer Berndt, 343–374. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Lobrichon, Guy. 1984. Une nouveauté: les gloses de la Bible. In Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, ed. Guy Lobrichon and Pierre Riché, 95–114. Paris: Beauchesne. de Lubac, Henri. 1959. Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’écriture. Paris: Aubier. Stover, Justin A. 2013. Hildegard, the Schools, and Their Critics. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Kienzle, George Ferzoco, and Debra Stoudt, 109–135. Leiden: Brill.

CHAPTER 5

Allegorical form: Narrative, the Cosmos, and the End of Time

The method of constructing visionary allegory described in the first chapter is a demanding one, predicated on the principle of close coherence between allegory and allegoresis. Such a method eventually meets its limits. I will discuss three of those limits, and the way in which the form of allegory and allegoresis adapts when confronted with them. I believe that the essence of Hildegard’s allegorical form shows itself most clearly at these limits. The first of these limits is the narrative. My analysis of exegetical form in the homilies made clear that Hildegard has to let go of the narrative of the biblical text when imposing her very strict exegetical method. Similarly, in the books of visions, the visions are not narrative. If they were, the task of interpreting them word for word would be impossible. In this chapter, I will compare Hildegard’s use of parables in her letters and in the books of visions. The comparison will highlight the complex relationship between narrative and Hildegard’s allegorical method. Second, I will study a shift in how the cosmos appears in Scivias and Liber divinorum operum, highlighting a formal change that seems to be influenced by a problematisation of the straightforward link between allegory and the cosmic reality to which it refers. In Scivias, the cosmos vision is allegorised as a direct representation of the real cosmos. It is a description, but because the real cosmos is already an allegory, the description functions in the same way as the other allegories in the visions do. However, the cosmos vision in Liber divinorum operum deals very differently with © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5_5

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the situation. It composes the cosmos vision in the same way as it does the other visions, thus indicating that the cosmos cannot automatically function as an allegory. Third, I will show how the method of allegory naturally breaks down in the last vision of each book, as the end of times is described. In Scivias, the text returns to Hildegard’s unshareable experience, without allegory as a mediator between prophet and reader. In Liber vite meritorum, the boundary between what Hildegard sees and what God explains, between allegory and allegoresis, disappears. Lastly, in Liber divinorum operum, the text develops a layered structure where the allegoresis keeps producing new allegories.

The Narrative of the Parables An exception to the strict use of the exegetical method in the allegoresis of the visions is the case of parables and similes. Hildegard is fond of the genre: especially her large letter collection is strewn with small narrative allegories and similes. Due to the dearth of literary scholarship on Hildegard’s works, in contrast to historical and theological approaches, not much study has been devoted to the form and function of these stories. In 1998, Peter Dronke expressed the need for a study on allegory in other works than the books of visions, saying, “[t]he extent to which she uses allegory in letters, for instance, is highly unusual—indeed, I cannot think of any other ancient or medieval author whose letters are so often fecund with allegories.”1 Twenty years later, I am not familiar with such a study. However, this is not the place to remedy this lack. My goal here is to contextualise the allegorical form of the visions, which remains the focus of my analysis. Similes appear frequently throughout the books of visions, as when in Scivias God compares himself to a doctor who easily cures small ills but asks the patient for a payment of silver and gold when a more serious illness is discovered.2 The interpretation, which follows swiftly, explains that small sins are easily forgiven when people regret what they have done but 1  Peter Dronke, “The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 8. 2  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), I, 3, 30.

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that serious faults must be emendated by penitence and punishment. Expanded similes like this characterise Scivias but are not found in the other books of visions. This is all the more the case for parables, which occur in Scivias but are completely absent from the two later books. Two explanations may account for this phenomenon. First, I have remarked earlier that whereas Scivias is a miscellany of literary forms, the later books streamline their style. In the first books of visions, we find hymns, a miniature drama, question-and-answer didactic dialogues, and parables. By the time Hildegard wrote her two later books, her creative energy had been channelled into many different projects. In addition, the first book of visions is much more didactic than the other two, and the parables clearly fit that purpose. We find four parables in Scivias.3 However, only one of these has a simple didactic structure, such as we find them, for instance, in Hildegard’s contemporary Galand of Reigny’s Parabolarium.4 This parable illustrates the fact that the devil tricks people in insidious ways. It begins: “A certain lord with many servants gives each of them weapons of war.” This lord then tells them to be brave and make themselves useful.5 While on the road, however, some of the servants spot a magician, and, wanting to learn his arts, run after him. As a result, they are cast off by their lord. The parable is quite straightforward but still accompanied by a detailed allegoresis. The other parables, of which I will give two examples, are much more complex. Again, this has to do with the dominance of their interpretation. The arrangement of these parables serves to accommodate the exegesis more than to tell a good story. Telling an allegorical story is always a balancing exercise between telling the explicit story and telling the implied story. The stories I will discuss here lean heavily towards the latter. The addition of the allegoresis eventually makes the implied story explicit, which would seem to alleviate the pressure on the explicit story to adapt 3  I,2,32; I,3,23; III,7,7; III,9,17. One could include the allegory of the soul in Scivias I,4,1–8, but because it occurs within a vision and has the structure of a monologue, I hesitate to put it next to the other parables. The terms ‘similitudo,’ ‘comparatio,’ and ‘parabola’ seem to be employed interchangeably in Scivias. I designate them as parables when there is a narrative and when the allegoresis stands apart from that narrative; in other words, when we have narrative allegory. 4  Galand de Reigny, “Parabolarium,” ed. Colette Friedlander, Jean Leclercq, and Gaetano Raciti (Paris: Cerf, 1992). 5  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I, 3, 23.

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itself to what is implied. This does not seem to be the case, however. On the contrary, the allegory seems to anticipate its correspondence to the allegoresis. Let us read, for instance, Scivias III,7,7, where a parable is narrated in order to exemplify the reprehensibility of the pagans who chose not to believe in Christ. The parable begins with a certain lord who has a fire-­ producing flintstone and who wants to communicate something very important to his people, both by means of the flintstone and messengers. But the messengers are not wise enough to understand the words of their lord. “Meanwhile,” the text says, “there began a great uproar”: a terrible storm rages over the land with thunder and earthquakes. The storm unearths a vessel with many little vessels in it, which had lain in the earth with its back turned to the sky but which now turns its opening upwards. Then, the lord decides to use his flintstone and sends a fire into his messengers, who finally remember their lord’s message and go forth to “the people without navels, whose city was destroyed” to deliver the message to them. To some, they are able to give back their navels and build their city anew; others they kill and “divide like pigs.” The issue here is not that the story is not comprehensible. Because the theme of the story has already been announced and is well known, the allegoresis brings no surprises, only a few clarifications. The flintstone is Christ, who, during his lifetime, had a hard time bringing his message across to his ignorant and dull disciples. Then, however, the Jews caused an uproar and unleashed a storm by putting Christ to death. As a result of this, the “first man and his offspring,” who had been dead because they had turned their back to heaven and were only focused on earthly matters, were “rooted out of the earth of death” and their gaze turned in the right direction. The fire that is sent from the flintstone is the Holy Spirit filling the apostles with Pentecostal fire. Instead of ignorant and timid, the apostles became wise and brave and began to spread God’s message. They went to the people without navels, that is, without the knowledge of divine justice, and without cities, that is, having destroyed the instruments of God’s law in their unfaithfulness to him. To many of these people, they restored their navels and their cities by bringing them to the baptismal font and giving them back the teachings of God. Others did not want this, and they will die and be divided by their vices. The issue is not that the allegory is incomprehensible, but that it is comprehended only from the side of the second line of reference (Christ’s message). The first line of reference does not form a coherent story that

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can be read for its own sake. Its narrative does not hold together: What does the flintstone have to do with the messengers, the messengers with the storm, the storm with the unearthed vessels, the vessels with the people without navels? The story in no way tries to hide that it is written for the sake of its interpretation. Every element of the story seems strange and unhinged in the first line of reference but significant and coherent in the second. This way of writing allegory adheres to the same principles as the visions’ allegory, albeit to a lesser degree of strictness. In another parable, we witness the complete disintegration of allegorical narrative. “The similitude of a garden, a sheep, and a pearl to a human” begins with a lord who wishes to plant a garden.6 He selects a good spot and fills it with all kinds of fruit trees and herbs. Lastly, he builds fortifications for the defence of the garden against his enemies, and he appoints herbalists who know how to water, harvest, and process the herbs. All of this leads to a question and a lesson: Quapropter, o homo, diligenter considera quia si dominus ille praeuidet quod hortus suus nullum fructum nec ullam utilitatem proferens destruendus est, quare tunc tantus philosophus et tantus artifex hortum illum in tam magno studio et in tam magnis laboribus facit, plantat, rigat et munit? Audi igitur et intellege! Deus, qui sol iustititae est, splendorem suum super lutum quod praevaricatio hominis est misit, et splendor ille in multa claritate resplenduit, quoniam lutum illud valde foedum fuit. Therefore, o human, consider this carefully: if the lord foresees that his garden must be destroyed without bearing any fruit and without being of any use, why does such a great philosopher and craftsman create that garden with so much care and effort, and plants, irrigates, and fortifies it? Listen to me and understand! God, who is the sun of justice, has sent his brightness over the mud that is the human predicament, and his brightness shone forth with much clarity, because the mud was very filthy.7

The garden obviously evokes Eden, but turns out rather to refer to the human condition after the fall, which requires hard work in the garden and the use of plants as cures. The conclusion of the garden scene is that the lord would never put so much work into the garden if he would not think it would bear fruit and be of use, but this leaves open the question of whether the garden is to be regarded as the Garden of Eden, creation 6 7

 Hildegard of Bingen, I, 2, 32.  Hildegard of Bingen, I, 2, 32.

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as a whole, or humankind. Instead of clarifying this, the lesson only complicates things because it introduces new elements: God is not mentioned as the owner of the garden but as the “sun of justice,” and the sinful situation of humans is compared to mud. This simile is further elaborated: as the sun is more radiant in comparison to mud, God’s justice shines all the more in comparison to the catastrophic misstep of humans. The story resumes, unexpectedly: “In hanc foeditatem cecidit ouis huius domini, qui talem hortum plantauerat” (“Into this dirt fell the sheep of this lord who had planted such a garden”).8 Apparently, we need to situate the sun above the garden and the mud as covering part of the garden. Also, we need to picture a sheep straying off and getting caught in the mud. Or rather not, because the sheep’s predicament is quite different than we would imagine, as the text tells us: “Sed ouis haec eidem domino non propter ignauiam eius, sed per consensum eiusdem ouis ablata est; quam postea idem dominus in multo studio et iustitia requisiuit” (“But the sheep of this lord was carried away not because of its weakness, but by its own consent; and afterwards the lord searched for it with great care and justice”).9 After this point, Hildegard abandons the allegory and begins talking about Christ by using the metaphor of the lost sheep, although it feels like the story went missing long before the sheep did. A last surprise is in store when at the end we are told that this same lord who had lost his sheep also owned a pearl, a pearl made in likeness of the sheep. This pearl, too, fell into the mud, but the clemency of the lord allowed him to extract the pearl from the mud and clean it so thoroughly as if it were gold in a furnace. The pearl, so the explanation goes, is humankind fallen and then restored through the blood of Christ. The whole story reads as the result of a spontaneous heaping upon each other of motifs, without much forethought for where it should lead. It begins with a scene that is clear enough: a garden with useful plants as an allegory of the human condition. But then the element of the mud is added, which only stands in a relation to the sun and not to the rest of the garden; the lord and the sun appear to refer to the same thing, but this is not made explicit; a sheep appears, which is linked to the mud and to the lord, but not to the sun; and then a pearl falls into the mud, symbolising the fall, although it was the fall which lay at the basis even of the existence 8 9

 Hildegard of Bingen, I, 2, 32.  Hildegard of Bingen, I, 2, 32.

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of the garden with its healing plants. All these elements are interspersed with exegetical lines, and it is these that seem to give direction to the story rather than the narrative. Contrary to the allegory of the visions, this allegorical parable, even in combination with its allegoresis, lacks coherence. It rather reads as an allegory in the making, a loose aggregate of metaphors. The struggle of reconciling double reference and coherent narrative is exposed, and so are the allegory’s priorities. Its primary goal is to tell something about the human condition of sinfulness and how it relates to God. Its secondary goal is to find powerful analogies and images for this teaching. Least important is the story. This is what makes the allegory break down: if there is no story to construct, the reader cannot read the ‘other’ story in parallel to the first one, and so a commentary is needed to prop up the allegory. Compare this parable to one that is also about a garden from Hildegard’s letter to a certain abbot Adam, who is anxious about the well-being of his monks and the future of his monastery.10 The story takes up the familiar theme of the confrontation between Winter and Summer. It tells of a man who is “a friend of the sun” and who has a garden in which he desires to plant many herbs and flowers. The plants thrive, with the sun giving them warmth and the rain and dew infusing them with greenness. But then from the north comes a crooked figure with black hair and a horrible face, while from the east approaches a beautiful young man with light hair and an amiable face. The northerner asks the young man where he comes from, and the latter answers that he comes from the east to pay a visit to the wise man to whom the garden belongs. The crooked figure then warns the young man that strong winds and hail, fire, and disease are approaching the garden and will dry it out. But the other responds that it will not be so, because he does not want it, and that he will build a fountain and irrigate the garden. This evokes laughter from the northerner, who finds it as likely that locusts would eat through a stone and proceeds by letting loose winter upon the garden. Meanwhile, the youth is distractedly playing on his harp and does not perceive what happens around him. When he finally does look up, he cries out to the sun to come into the sign of Taurus and finally bring the green life of summer to the garden. In each hand, he takes a horn and smites down the crooked figure with them.

10  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars prima: I–XC, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 85R.

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Then, he walks up to his friend and advises him not to place trust in himself alone but to build defences around his garden. An allegoresis is added to the parable, which explains that abbot Adam also has a garden, a garden of people on which the grace of God shines, but that Adam would do well to defend and admonish his monks in every way he can. The figures of the northerner and the easterner stand for the vices and the virtues, which meet in Adam’s monastery. The virtues are sent by God to make the monastery into a place where the praise of God is sung. The vices, however, take a dim view of the matter and predict calamities and adversities for the monastery, so that the monks will get tired of serving God. The virtues deny that this will happen, as they will never falter and the mercy of God will always help his people. This evokes the laughter of their opponents, who deem this as likely as when the fragile flesh of the body could remain fresh and without wrinkles. The action begins when the vices beset the people with the cold cloud of ignorance, which the virtues answer by devoting themselves to the service of God. The people come to their senses and everything ends well. In opposition to the Scivias parables, this is a coherent allegorical narrative. In contrast to the garden-parable, the allegory is able to function without its allegoresis. In contrast to the flintstone-parable, the first and second lines of reference are more attuned to each other. Each can stand on its own, but plays nicely into the other as well. The key to the accomplished narrative is that not everything is allegorically significant. As Galand de Reigny says in his collection of parables for Cistercian monks, “Non omnia quae sunt in cithara sonant, sed omnia iuvant. Sic non tota parabola allegoriam sonat, sed tota iuvat. Nisi enim cetera circumstarent, quae allegoriam sonant non extarent” (“Not every part of a cither makes a sound, but all the parts bring pleasure. Likewise, not the whole parable is allegorical, but it is pleasurable as a whole. If the other parts would not be present, neither would be the allegory”).11 The story is entitled to its own creative narration and is not governed by the allegoresis’ dictates. This builds a contrast to the visionary parables, which exhibit no such internal coherence when read on their own. Every element in them is there for the sake of the allegory’s implied line of reference and is made explicit in the allegoresis. In general, the many parables found in the letters are elegant and fitting allegories that can be understood without their allegoresis. Even though  Galand de Reigny, “Parabolarium,” 198.

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the allegoresis is helpful, it is not necessary. Apparently, be it because of the theme or because of the genre, the stakes are much higher in the books of visions, and this puts a heavy strain on the narrative element of the allegories, even on the comparatively careless allegory of the parables.

The Reality of the Cosmos The Textuality of Visionary Reality In the first chapter, I described how the first vision of Scivias right away frustrates the expectation that there will be something to see in the visions. Even the term ‘to see’ is read as a metaphor, a metaphor of speaking and knowing, and so the reality of the visual in the visions is undercut right at the beginning. In addition, Hildegard adopts the image discourse of biblical prophets like Ezekiel. Just as Ezekiel sees “quasi aspectus lapidis sapphiri similitudo throni: et super similitudinem throni similitudo quasi aspectus hominis desuper” (“Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man”),12 Hildegard sees “quasi montem magnum ferreum colorem habentem” (“something like a large mountain of an iron colour”).13 Every description receives a qualification indicating that something is only “like” something else, “as if” it were like that, “a similitude” of something, a “form” but nothing more substantial. As a good example of the use of such qualifications, I will quote the first vision of the third book of Liber divinorum operum, which treats the theme of God’s foresight. It begins with the following words. Et iterum uidi quasi cuiusdam magne ciuitatis instrumentum quadratum, uelut quodam splendore et quibusdam tenebris quasi muro hinc et hinc circumdatum, ac etiam quemadmodum quibusdam montibus et imaginibus exornatum. And again I saw the square instrument of something like a great city, surrounded here and there as if with a certain brightness and with some shadows in the likeness of a wall, and also as if decorated with some mountains and images.14  Ezekiel 1, 26.  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I, 1. 14  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. Peter Dronke and Albert Derolez, CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), III, 1. 12 13

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As in the first vision of Scivias, if we take this sentence at its word that it is a description of something seen, we must come to the conclusion that there is not actually much to see. The only thing that is not qualified is the form of a square. The form is called an “instrumentum.” This word has kept roughly the same meaning in English. An instrument denotes a particular use to which something can be put, but cannot be visualised without further specification. However, the expected specification remains elusive, because the square is only “as if” the form of a great city, it is surrounded only “as if” with light and shadow, “as if” these formed a wall, and so on. The vision continues to qualify every single element that appears in this way, such as something that looks like a mountain, with something resembling a mirror on top of it, the reflection in the mirror carrying the likeness of a dove, a whole choir of what looks like angels, and so on. Barbara Newman sees this kind of language as an attempt “when all else failed to express the inexpressible.”15 This statement presupposes that one sees the “vidi”-part of the vision as an attempt to express something in itself, apart from its relation to the allegoresis. In the light of the perfect meaningfulness of what is seen once it has been given meaning by the allegoresis, however, it seems strange to say that the vision does not succeed in expressing what it wants to express. I rather concur with Maura Zátonyi’s viewpoint, which is that the qualifications indicate the metaphorical character of the visionary speech.16 Instead of signalling the vision’s inadequacy of representing meaningfully, I would rather read these qualifications as indications that one must look beyond the representation itself to the meaning that lies beyond. They point to the fact that the allegory is not a picture to look at but an instrument to think with. They deny the reality of what is pictured on one level in order to make it useful on another. This is, again, an undermining of the structure of allegory itself. If we think of allegory as a structure projecting two levels of reference at once, then these qualifications erode the reference of the literal level.17 They constantly point out that the literal is not really there, that the vision is not real in the literal sense of the word, in order to make 15  Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 26. 16  Maura Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi: die Schrifthermeneutik in der Visionstrilogie Hildegards von Bingen (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012), 278. 17  See Chap. 2.

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sure that the other level, that of the metaphorically and truly real, is not neglected. Similar to these staples of Hildegard’s visionary style are the more explicit statements that “something is not really as it appears.” For instance, in Scivias, the vision shows “velut quidam vermis mirae magnitudinis et longitudinis” (“something like a snake of a remarkable height and length”).18 This is the “antiquus serpens,” the ancient snake. However, the snake is not its real form; rather, “in significatione mysterii, uidelicet magnus in malitia, longus in insidiis proiectus apparet” (“it appears in its spiritual signification, namely, great in malice and long in its treachery”).19 Rather than to read literally, one must read metaphorically, by means of its characteristics. Further in Scivias, the following is said about personified virtues: “non quod ulla virtus sit vivens forma in semetipsa, sed solummodo praelucida sphaera a deo fulgens in opera hominis” (“not that any virtue is a living form in itself, but only a luminous sphere shining from God in the deeds of humans”).20 Lastly, the soul is said to work with the intellect and the will as if with two arms, but “non quod anima brachia se ad mouendum habeat, sed quod in his uiribus se manifestat uelut sol per splendorem suum se declarat” (“not that the soul has arms to move itself with, but that it manifests itself in these powers, just as the sun makes itself known through its brightness”).21 These nuances clearly show that light-­metaphors are considered safer than anything more concrete. Furthermore, when the elements cry out to their maker in Liber vite meritorum, the allegoresis hastens to explain that they do not do so in human language, but rather “show some significations” of the pressures they are under (“quasdam significationes pressurarum suarum ostendunt”).22 In the same book, whenever the visionary sees a group of personified vices, she takes care to mention that she sees these vices “in imaginibus suis” (“in their figural representations”).23 And the exegetical voice explains that these are not their real forms but the representations of what they signify: “non autem quod ita in formis suis sint, sed quod significationes eorum hoc modo manifestantur […]” (“not, however, that they  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, II,7,3.  Hildegard of Bingen, II,7,3. 20  Hildegard of Bingen, II,3,3. 21  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,18. 22  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, CCCM 90 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), 3,23. 23  Hildegard of Bingen, I. 18 19

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are really like this in their material forms, but that their significations are manifested in this way […]”).24 There is a stark contrast between this and the second part of the visions in the Liber vite meritorum, where the sinners’ souls are shown as they receive their punishments in purgatory. Here it is said, “Hec que uides uera sunt; et ut ea uides ita sunt, et plura sunt” (“These things you see are real; and they are as you see them, and there are many of them”).25 In other words, the text stresses that the vices do not in reality manifest themselves as materially as they do in the visions, but they are not therefore any less real. The fire that burns the sinners and the worms that gnaw at them are all too tangible. The figural has direct literal consequences. In a cosmographical vision of Liber divinorum operum, the winds are symbolically represented as animals. A warning is added that the winds do not really have animal shapes, “non tamen sic in formis suis existentes,” but that they share some natural qualities with the leopard, the wolf, the lion, and the bear.26 For instance, if the eastern wind appears as a leopard’s head blowing flames, this does not mean that this wind occurs in the form of a leopard, but rather because a leopard is as ferocious but less smart than a lion, and because a leopard is leaner but weaker than a lion: just so, the eastern wind blows heavily but turns quickly and then dies down.27 Hildegard keeps insisting that allegorical form is a special form, both more and less real than literal. She undercuts the literal level of the allegory in order to highlight the figural. She always complements this negative warning of literal reading with guidelines on how to read figurally: abstract the natural qualities of material things and apply them to less concrete entities. Rather than an expression of the inexpressible, the allegory functions as an instrument for thinking. The Reality of the Textual Cosmos The allegory, then, offers a description of a textual reality, not a visual one. What links, however, connect textual reality to the reality outside of the text? The constant undermining of the literal reference of the allegory makes clear that the description itself is far removed from that reality. The  Hildegard of Bingen, I,66.  In the first vision, it occurs at I,77. 26  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,2,16. 27  Hildegard of Bingen, I,2,17. 24 25

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allegorical meaning of a word needs to be determined via its reference to a thing and its characteristics, which, although codified in textual form, refer to extratextual reality. This all seems to function quite well. However, there is one instance where the issue of reality comes into sharper focus and causes problems, and that is in the cosmos visions. Scivias contains only one cosmos vision, whereas, in Liber divinorum operum, the majority of the visions are about an aspect of the cosmos. I will argue, first, that the Scivias cosmos vision holds an uncomplicated view of the relation between the cosmos as allegory and the cosmos vision as textual allegory, and that we see this view reflected in the form of allegory and allegoresis. Second, I will show how this view becomes untenable in Liber divinorum operum, which results in a different allegorical form. The cosmos vision in Scivias is treated differently from all the other visions in the book. Immediately apparent is the lack of qualifying words like “velut” and “quasi.” Does their absence mean that, in this case, the literal level of the allegory does exist “in forma sua”? Indeed, the summarising statement at the beginning of the exegesis indicates that this is the case: Deus qui omnia in sua uoluntate condidit, ea ad cognitionem et honorem nominis sui creauit, non solum autem ea quae uisibilia et temporalia sunt in ipsis ostendens, sed etiam illa quae inuisibilia et aeterna sunt in eis manifestans. Quod et uisio haec quam cernis demonstrat. God, who has established everything according to his will, has created everything for the purpose of the knowledge and honour of his name, manifesting in creation not only what is visible and temporal but also what is invisible and eternal.28

The vision of the cosmos shows how everything that is visible and material manifests an invisible and immaterial meaning. The cosmos is a complete allegory in itself. If the cosmos is an allegory, it follows that it can be represented in its entirety as an allegorical vision. Whereas other visions assemble elements from the natural world to make up an allegory representing a certain theological doctrine, this vision establishes the principle on the grounds of which it is even possible to do so, namely the fact that the whole extratextual reality is already allegorical. The equation of textual and intratextual reality in this vision will only become clear in  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I,3,1.

28

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comparison to the cosmos visions of Liber divinorum operum. What I will say for now is that, in contrast to the later work, the Scivias allegory is a description of the cosmos in both its material and its allegorical dimension. As the summarising statement indicates, this double description is exactly the goal of the vision. In the allegory, Hildegard describes the cosmos as “maximum instrumentum rotundum et umbrosum secundum similitudinem ovi” (“a huge instrument, round and dark and in the shape of an egg”).29 The cosmos, where everything that is visible refers to something invisible, is an instrument for allegorical thinking. In the rest of the vision, too, the description makes use of Hildegard’s typically prophetical language use, which does not name but describe. The sun is “a globe of deep red fire,” which does not have rays but flames, the planets are “three torches,” a cosmic sphere is a “skin,” and the earth itself is “a sandy globe in the middle of these elements.”30 The detached descriptions allow for the use of polysemy and metaphorical play. They seem to capture an essence rather than an outer appearance. This kind of language is functional, in the manner of the “instrumentum”: it makes allegory function. The vision describes the cosmos as round, dark, and egg-shaped.31 It has a flaming outer edge, like a skin. In this edge is situated the globe of the sun, which illuminates the whole cosmos. Above the sun, three planets keep the sun in place. The sun sometimes rises, throwing its flames a long way, and sometimes descends, shortening its reach. The skin also contains a dark fire that shakes the skin and brings forth sound, storms, and stones. Under the skin, the air is pure and contains the white globe of the moon, which is again held in place by two planets. The moon illuminates the many stars surrounding her. Under this pure air is a watery air that suffuses the cosmos with humidity. When it contracts, it pours forth heavy showers; when it is diffused, it causes a light rain. In the middle of the cosmos hangs a sandy globe, shaken by the winds that cross the cosmos. On this globe rests a mountain, with a dark northern side and a sunlit eastern side.  Hildegard of Bingen, I,3.  Hildegard of Bingen, I,3. 31  For an overview on Hildegard’s cosmology, see Hans Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Leipzig: BG Teubner, 1930); Heinrich Schipperges, Gott ist am Werk (Olten: Walter, 1958); Kent Thomas Kraft, “The Eye Sees More than the Heart Knows: The Visionary Cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen” (Madison, University of Wisconsin, 1977); Elizabeth Gössmann, Hildegard of Bingen (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing, 1995). 29 30

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The allegoresis employs the usual method to lay bare the meanings implied by the allegory. First, it explains how the whole cosmos stands spiritually for God. The roundness of the cosmos means he is omnipotent, its darkness that he is incomprehensible, and its egg shape that he is the hope of all believers. As an egg is narrow on the bottom and the top and broad in the middle, so the first people were not yet wise, until Scripture broadened their wisdom, although that wisdom will narrow again as the end of times approaches. The flaming skin of the cosmos represents the difference between those who are outside of the faith, whom God burns with the fire of retribution, and the faithful believers, purified by the fire of consolation. The sun is Christ, who rises with the incarnation and descends in the moment of his Passion. At the end of the allegoresis, the earth stands for the human, and the mountain with his dark and light side represents the human condition between salvation and damnation. In sum, although the description of the cosmos is abstract and focuses on the qualities of its elements rather than their human designations, the aim of this vision is to show that the shape and movements of the material cosmos carry direct reference to the spiritual cosmos. This relatively simple relation crumbles in the later books. Liber divinorum operum is different from Scivias in that it has not one separate cosmos vision but builds its whole structure around different aspects of the cosmos. The first book describes the macrocosm of cosmic spheres, winds, and the constitution of the cosmos, together with its mirror image, the human microcosm. The second book describes the parts of the earth, zooming in on those uninhabitable reaches where temporary punishment is taking place after death. The third book transcends these material localities and describes the heavenly city. For the purpose of demonstrating the difference with the Scivias cosmic vision, I will limit my discussion of the cosmological allegory in Liber divinorum operum to vision I,2.32 Looking back to Scivias, we can say that the cosmos vision there is different from the other visions in that book because the allegory shows how everything material is also allegorical. This simple relation is complicated in the later books. In Liber divinorum operum, the relation of the cosmos as an allegorical unity to the exegetical method as a way to discover that unity becomes much more complex. 32  For a comparison of these same vision from a different viewpoint, see Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 241–46. I have decided not to write my own discussion in dialogue with Zátonyi because I touch upon the differences between our views in other parts of this thesis.

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The first vision of book I is not yet a proper cosmos vision but a vision of Caritas carrying the cosmos. In the previous chapter, I discussed this vision as an example of extreme exegetical rigour, which seems to announce that the exegetical method will be applied in this book with even more care than in Scivias. The second vision of book I starts describing the cosmos in a way that is very similar to Scivias. Only the overall shape of the cosmos is different: a circle instead of the cosmic egg from three decades before. This difference is addressed by the exegesis, which says that both of these shapes are only likenesses. What is important in the likeness of the egg is its structure: the way in which yolk is separated from egg white is similar to the makeup of the cosmos. On the contrary, what is relevant in the likeness of the circle is its shape: its circumference and proportions. Neither structure nor shape, however, is able to express the cosmos completely, in all its aspects: “neutrum ipsorum similitudinem figure mundi per omnia teneat” (““none of the two captures the likeness of the shape of the world in all its aspects”).33 Here occurs a break with Scivias. The cosmos is no longer represented as it really is but appears in symbolical form. The real shape of the cosmos is complex and polyvalent in its utility for exegesis. Allegory simplifies and schematises reality by only taking into account one aspect of a word/thing. It either takes into account the inner structure or the outer form of the cosmos, which results in either an egg form or a circle. Neither of these, however, is the real form. In each case, what is represented is an abstraction made by the mind. Exegetical method does no longer automatically line up with extratextual reality but requires its own, textual, configuration of a complex reality. This textual configuration refers not to reality but to the workings of the mind. Allegory is no longer equated with what is visible, as in the summarising statement in Scivias I,3, but with what is recognised and processed by the mind. This is also reflected in how the allegory takes shape. It begins as a direct rendering in words of the material cosmos, as the Scivias vision, but then it turns into something else. First, we encounter the same layered structure: the circle of flaming fire, partly covered by the circle of dark fire, the circle of pure ether and that of the watery air, which falls together with a circle of strong white air, and lastly a circle of thin air in the middle of which is situated the globe of the earth. Now, the description adds the figure of a person, who stands with outstretched hands touching the outlines of the circle of the strong white air. Depictions of various cosmic  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,2,3.

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forces surround this figure: the winds, the planets, sun and moon, and stars. Although the planets and stars appear as they do in Scivias, the winds are represented symbolically as blowing forth from animal heads. For instance, the four principal winds emerge from the heads of a leopard (east), wolf (west), lion (south), and bear (north). This demonstrates that the allegory no longer corresponds to a description of the natural allegory of the cosmos but is an allegorical composition like the other, non-­ cosmological, visions. The allegoresis confirms this by relating the allegory first to the natural cosmos and from there on to its spiritual interpretation. Take, for example, the allegoresis of the circle of pure ether.34 In the allegory, this is described in qualifying terms as “circulus in similitudine puri etheris.” In contrast to the Scivias vision, the allegory does not describe the circle of pure ether itself but a likeness of it. Therefore, the allegoresis first explains that this thing that looks like a circle of pure ether is, in fact, the cosmic circle of pure ether. Only then and on the basis of this identification is the pure ether interpreted as “the pure penitence of sinners”: Sub eodem autem circulo nigri ignis alius circulus in similitudine puri etheris est […]; quoniam sub prefatis ignibus, tam lucido quam nigro, rotunditate sua mundum comprehendens purus ether est, ab ipsis procedens uelut fulgor a flammante igne, quando ignis flammam suam expandit, demonstrans puram penitentiam peccatorum, que per gratiam Dei uelut a lucido igne et per timorem eius quasi a nigro in homine excitatur. Under this circle of black fire, there is another circle which looks like pure ether […]; because under those fires of which I spoke, the luminous one as well as the black one, is the pure ether, which encircles the world in its roundness. It proceeds from these fires like a flash from a flaming fire, when the fire expands its flame. This pure ether demonstrates the pure penitence of sinners, which is stirred up in people through the grace of God like a luminous fire and through the fear of God like a black fire. [Emphasis added]35

This exegetical practice indicates that the link between the extratextual and the textual cosmos is no longer one of direct representation. The pure ether in the allegory only represents the pure ether in the cosmos symbolically, via an indirect referential relationship. The same exegetical practice  Hildegard of Bingen, I,2,5.  Hildegard of Bingen, I,2,5.

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applies to it as to the clearly symbolical winds, where the characteristics of the animals indicate the characteristics of the winds. Another example is that of the globe in the middle of the cosmos.36 The explanation first says that this globe, which keeps an equal distance on all sides from the strong white air, is the earth, which is situated in the middle of all the other elements so as to be tempered and sustained by them. Only in a second move does the allegoresis explain that the earth stands for the active life, which should find a balance between the virtues. A reversal has taken place in comparison to the cosmos vision of Scivias. There, the allegory of the cosmos was treated differently from the others. Its reference to reality was not qualified because it was not a likeness of the cosmos but a direct textual representation. The allegoresis, however, proceeded in the same straightforward manner as with the other allegories, because it considered the relation between the natural world and its spiritual meaning to be as direct as that between an allegorical composition and its double meaning. The prophet’s last book of visions, however, reverses this way of working. The allegory of the cosmos is no longer treated differently from the other allegories. It is a composition, not a description. The allegoresis, however, treats the allegory differently by first relating every element from the composition to its natural counterpart. In Scivias, the relation between visible cosmos and invisible meaning is equated with the textual relation between allegory and allegoresis. In Liber divinorum operum, the cosmos needs to be allegorised as well as textualized before it can function. This seems to problematise the idea of the cosmos as an allegory that can be read in the same way as a text. This idea is metaphorically true but not literally. Scivias still holds it to be literally true: the cosmos can be read as an allegory; all the vision needs to do is to give a description of this already allegorical entity before allegoresis can be applied to it. The second vision of Liber divinorum operum, however, announces that the relationship is not so simple. The cosmos is not literally a text. Therefore, it cannot be interpreted by means of a textual method of interpretation. For the one-to-one transposition of meaning to work, the cosmos first has to be made into  Hildegard of Bingen, I,2,13.

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an allegory. An act of cognition is interposed between the perception of the cosmos and the recognition of its deeper meaning. The mind first has to discern the meaningful aspects of something and focus on one of these aspects. This cognitive act is what is represented textually by the cosmos vision of the later book of visions, corresponding to the more complex cognitive model that Hildegard elaborates in the same work and that I will describe in the next chapter.

The End of Time After discussing narrative and material reality, I will now analyse how the exegetical method handles the event that signifies the end of both. As all three books of visions follow the course of history, they end with the Last Judgment. In each book, this event causes a breakdown of the formal boundaries between allegory and allegoresis. At the end of time, the need for allegory and allegoresis falls away, as the visible and the invisible reunite, and meaning becomes one again. I will argue that the allegory attempts to represent its own breakdown. Scivias The last vision of Scivias (III,13) replaces the allegorical vision with a “vision” that exists only of sound. After the Last Judgment, Hildegard perceives nothing but light and hears a concert of voices singing in heaven.37 This is represented for the reader by the text of the symphonies. First, Hildegard hears seven symphonies that sing the praise of the inhabitants of heaven: Mary, the nine angelic orders, the patriarchs and the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, and the virgins. Second, she hears the lament about those who have been denied entrance. A third part offers a miniature version of the Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard’s allegorical drama. Here as there, a group of virtues encourages a group of lamenting human souls, and an individual soul is torn between the virtues

37  This vision is closely related to both the liturgical drama Ordo Virtutum and the Symphonia: Peter Dronke, “The Composition of Hildegard of Bingen’s Symphonia,” Sacris Erudiri 19 (1969): 381–93; Gunilla Iversen, “Ego Humilitatis  regina Virtutum: Poetic Language and Literary Structure in Hildegard of Bingen’s Vision of the Virtues,” in The Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard of Bingen: Critical Studies, ed. Audrey Ekdahl Davidson (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan university, 1992); William Flynn, Tova Fleigh-Choate, and Margot Fassler, “Hearing the Heavenly Symphony: An Overview of Hildegard’s Musical Oeuvre with Case Studies,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. George Ferzoco, Beverly Kienzle, and Debra Stoudt (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 162–92.

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and the suggestions of the devil. The drama ends with the saving of the soul and a song of praise to God. I will later describe how the form of Hildegard’s text does not correspond to how she describes her experience. The experience is a sudden simultaneity of perception and insight, a flash of knowledge. This is not a form of knowledge that can be put in words and communicated. The experience can be described, but the knowledge that it gives cannot be shared. Therefore, although the text works with the descriptions of something seen and something heard, these two references to the visionary experience have themselves become part of the allegory. In this last vision, however, there is no allegory, and the focus is brought back to the prophet’s experience: the sound “goes right through [her], so that [she] can understand without any delay.”38 This corresponds to how Hildegard describes the mode in which she usually receives her visions, as she says in the letter to Guibert of Gembloux: “Et simul uideo et audio ac scio, et quasi in momento hoc quod scio disco” (“And simultaneously I see and I hear and I know, and seemingly in the same moment I teach what I know”).39 This focus on Hildegard’s experience, which cannot be shared, goes hand in hand with the process of allegoresis coming to a halt. The vision text is still divided into the vision and its explanation, but the explanation only gives some clarifications in order to develop an argument on the blessings of song. The vision is not allegorical, and so there is no need for allegoresis. God explains that Hildegard can understand the sound of the symphonies at once and without any temporal delay because “where the grace of God is active, it takes away the darkness of all shadows.”40 This last vision of Scivias, then, directs its view to the time when human understanding will no longer be clouded by shadows, when the grace that is accorded to Hildegard will be shared by every soul in heaven. By providing only the text to a song that cannot be heard, the vision gives a reminder that the allegorical method has never provided a direct access to prophetic vision, but only the best possible translation to the human level of thinking. Just as the song text provides an opportunity for 38  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, III,13. “Et sonus earum ita pertransiuit me, quod eas absque difficultate tarditatis intellexi.” 39  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), 103R (p. 262). 40  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, III,13,14.

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coming closer to Hildegard’s experience of grace, because it offers a starting point for musical performance, so the allegory provides an opportunity for coming closer to understanding through means that are available to all humans. By offering only a song text with the promise of heavenly music, Hildegard halts the dynamic of allegory and allegoresis in order to show its limits, but also its possibilities. Liber vite meritorum The last vision of Liber vite meritorum takes place not after but during the Last Judgment, in the course of which the allegoresis ceases. It does not do so right away. The cosmos man, who is present throughout the whole book, begins to move, and with him moves the whole earth. A unicorn appears in his left loin and licks his knees, declaring: Que facta sunt destruentur, et non facta edificabuntur. Peccatum quoque in homine examinabitur, et bonum iustis operibus in ipso perficietur, ac ipse bono rumore in aliam uitam redibit. That what was made will be destroyed, and that what was not made will be built. The sin in people will be examined and the good in them will be accomplished with righteous deeds, and they who have a good reputation will return to another life.41

This part receives an allegoresis: at the end of time, God will shake the boundaries of the world, as a warning that the souls should prepare themselves for judgment. The unicorn appearing in the cosmos man’s loins seems an antitype for the monstrous head of the Antichrist that appears in the loins of the Church in Scivias III,11. There, the loins stood for depraved sexuality, whereas here the unicorn stands for Christ, and the loins represent his incarnation. The unicorn licks the cosmos man’s knees as a sign that Christ accepts judicial power from his Father. After this little scene, Hildegard says she expected to see some of the virtues and vices that she saw in earlier visions, but nothing appears.42 The explanation is given that, with the world having come to a standstill, the vices have ceased to be active as well. Everything is now in a state of eternity, where there is no opposition anymore.  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, 6,1.  Hildegard of Bingen, 6,1. “Et considerabam si uitia aliqua seu alia ulla his similia, que prius conspexeram, hic apparerent; et nihil istis simile hic mihi ostensum est.”/“And I wondered whether there would appear vices or virtues similar to those that I had seen earlier; but nothing similar was shown to me.” 41 42

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The vision now moves into its second part. Every vision in Liber vite meritorum consists of an allegorical and a non-allegorical part. In the former, the personifications of virtues and vices debate each other. The latter shows the punishments of people in the afterlife. In the second part of the last vision, Hildegard again witnesses hell and heaven, in a non-allegorical manner: “Hec que vides vera sunt; et ut ea vides ita sunt, et plura sunt” (“The things which you see are real; and they are as you see them, and there are many of them”).43 She sees the souls of those who were born before Christ, who reside in the shadows without being tormented, and she hears the wailing of tormented souls coming out of hell, although she cannot view the inside of hell. Then follows a long description of the beatified souls in heaven, which the visionary perceives “as if through a mirror.” The different groups of souls are adorned with different ornaments according to their merits in life. At one point, in describing the martyrs, Hildegard begins to explain the meaning of their ornaments herself, blending the exegesis with her own account of what she sees. For instance, the martyrs are clothed in purple red, and Hildegard explains that this stands for the blood they have given for their faith.44 This overflow of the interpretation into the vision is repeated when the voice of God is rendered indirectly.45 Although Hildegard mentions that the information comes from the heavenly voice, she relates in her own words what God tells her. In conclusion, the last vision of Liber vite meritorum reflects in its form what will happen to allegory and allegoresis during the Last Judgment. The boundary between the vision and its interpretation is suspended with the event that ends time and therefore makes interpretation redundant. Liber divinorum operum Each of the books of visions’ final parts ends a bit earlier in history. Whereas Scivias ends after the end of time, Liber vite meritorum shows the Last Judgment as it happens, and vision five of the third part of Liber divinorum operum never actually reaches that last act of salvation history but is a masterful build-up to it. Here, the system of allegory and allegoresis breaks down by enveloping multiple levels of narrative in each other, so that the allegoresis of the first allegory includes a new

 Hildegard of Bingen, 6,11.  Ibid., 6.29. 45  Cf., Dinah Wouters, “Envisioning divine didactics: didactic strategies in the visionary trilogy of Hildegard of Bingen,” Sacris Erudiri 54 (2015): 243–44. 43 44

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allegory, which then brings about its own allegoresis, and so on. The story is told on five levels, of which each level includes the lower ones46: 1. the allegory of the vision + its allegoresis, including: 2. a speech by Christ + its allegoresis, developing into: 3. the allegorical story of Justice, the Antichrist, and the end times, including: 4. an enumeration of the apostles and their symbols + its allegoresis The first level is the abstract allegorical representation of time as a circle diagram with different colours.47 Horizontally through the middle of the circle runs a dark line; the upper part of the circle is divided again by a gold line; the part to the left of this gold line is coloured in green and the part to the right in red. The lower half of the circle is pale white intermixed with black. In the middle of the circle diagram and in the middle of the horizontal black line sits the figure of Caritas, which Hildegard recognises from a previous vision. Caritas is carrying a transparent tablet. When she looks at this tablet, the black line on which she is seated begins to move, and colours appear in the lower half of the circle, beginning in the left corner: first a watery colour, then deep red, then pure and luminous white, and finally the colour of a rainstorm. The allegoresis explains, on a second level, that the circle represents eternity and the horizontal black line the will of God that separates the temporal (below the line) from the eternal (above the line). The upper part is divided into a green and a red half: the green stands for the creatures when they were still ideas in the mind of God, the red for the state of souls after the end of the world. The lower part of the circle is a vague mix of black and grey to indicate the volatile nature of time and the terrors associated with it. Next, this whole sequence also receives an anagogical exegesis focused on “the salvation of human souls,” in which the circle stands for the perfection of the power of God, the green for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the red for the beatitude of the souls after time, and the grey for the infernal places where those are sent who neglect God during their lifetime.48 46  The text is also interspersed with bible verses and their exegesis, which is an extra level that I have not included in my schema, because it is common to all the books of visions and does not play a structural role. 47  For an analysis of the colour symbolism in this vision, see Meier, “Die Bedeutung der Farben im Werk Hildegards von Bingen.” 48  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, III,5.

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The first allegoresis continues: when Caritas looks at her tablet, which is God’s providence, the conjunction of both sets in motion the creation of ideas by the will of God, which is the beginning of time. The watery colour of the first period stands for the course of time until the flood, the red that follows it for the period until the incarnation, and the luminous white for the time of the apostles until the days when womanly weakness replaces the strength of former times. This time is of course Hildegard’s own time, when the greenness of the virtues becomes dry and justice is neglected. During these days, when winter turns so hot and summer so warm “that many would say that the Day of Judgment is near,” the allegoresis is interrupted by an address of the Son to the Father, asking to show his grace to humans.49 The text is the same as the epilogue of the Ordo Virtutum: In principio omnes creature uiruerunt, in medio flores floruerunt, postea uiriditas descendit. Et istud uir preliator uidit, et dixit: Hoc tempus scio. Sed aureus numerus nondum est plenus. Tu ergo paternum speculum aspice. In corpore meo fatigationem sustineo; paruuli etiam mei deficiunt. Nunc memor esto quod plenitudo, que in primo facta est, arescere non debuit. Et tunc in te habuisti quod oculus tuus numquam cederet, usque dum corpus meum uideres plenum gemmarum. Nam me fatigat quod omnia membra mea in irrisionem uadunt. Pater, uide: uulnera mea tibi ostendo. Ergo nunc, omnes homines, genua uestra ad patrem uestrum flectite, ut uobis manum suam porrigat! In the beginning all creatures greened, in the middle flowers bloomed, but then the greenness decreased. And the warrior man saw this and said: I know this time. But the golden number is not yet complete. You, fatherly mirror, look at me. My body suffers exhaustion; my little children are failing. Now remember that the fullness that was made in the beginning should not grow dry. And then your eye will never yield until you see my body full of gems. Because it exhausts me that all my limbs have fallen to derision. Father, look: I am showing you my wounds. So, now, all people, bend your knees before your father, so that he will reach out his hand to you.50  Hildegard of Bingen, III,5,7. “ut multi dicerent diem iudicii imminere.”  Hildegard of Bingen, III,5,8; Hildegard of Bingen, “Ordo Virtutum,” in Opera Minora I, CCCM 226, ed. Peter Dronke (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). 49 50

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This short speech receives an extremely long exegesis, which will run almost until the end of the vision. This exegesis is the third level on which salvation history is told in the vision. The first sentence of Christ’s speech is basically a summary of the lower part of the time diagram, in a subtly different version. The greenness of the beginning stands for the time when the earth was green and required no labour, so that humans devoted themselves completely to earthly pleasures. The time after the flood up until the present is the time of the flowers, and now the greenness of both earth and humans is beginning to fade. This summary occasions an exegesis in which the story of salvation is told, this time not in diagrammatical but in narrative form. The narrative takes on allegorical proportions with the introduction of the personification of Iustitia: Ante finem autem dierum horum, muliebris scilicet debilitatis, iusticia, quam filius Dei cum anulo desponsationis discipulis suis in omnem terram eos mittendo commiserat, surget, uestes que suas, quas ab apostolis susceperat, per iniquitatem populorum contaminatas et scissas demonstrabit. Before the end of these times of womanly weakness, Justice will rise up, whom the son of God had given a wedding ring by sending his disciples to all corners of the earth. She will show her clothes, which she received from the apostles, soiled and ripped by the injustice of the people.51

Justice receives her clothes from the apostles, and we get an enumeration of all the apostles with their deeds and virtues and the piece of Justice’s attire which they represent. Here, in the narrowest part of the narrative, allegory and exegesis almost fall together, as the interpretation follows immediately after the description: Ipse [i.e., Matheus] utique ex serico pie intentionis camisiam, id est bene ordinatam contritionem et ut lux diei lucidam, parauit, illa que iusticiam induit, ubi pro iusticia a martirio non declinauit. He [i.e., Matthew] gives a silk shirt of pious intent, that is: well-regulated contrition that is luminous as the light of day. With this shirt, he clothes justice by not shrinking away from martyrdom for her sake.52

The story of Justice and the end times continues intermittedly within the exegesis of Christ’s words to his father, which itself serves a function  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, III,5,8.  Hildegard of Bingen, III,5,9.

51 52

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within this narrative, as a commentary on each period of the end times. But Hildegard employs another structure as well, namely that of the five animals which, in Scivias III.2, had stood for five kingdoms but which now represent five periods of the end times: the dog, lion, horse, pig, and wolf. Shortly before the end, at the beginning of the period of the pig, when the reader had almost forgotten about the original allegory, the exegesis of the last part of the time diagram resumes with the explanation of the last piece of the diagram (III,5,27). The colour of a rainstorm corresponds to the stormy judgments that God will impart to this age of inobedience and turmoil. This is the introduction to the period of the pig and the wolf, when the Antichrist spreads doubt and terror. Here, too, we find the last piece of the exegesis of Christ’s speech (III,5,34). The actual last chapter of the narrative, finally, is an exegesis of the words of Revelation 12, 10–11.53 The narrative ends with the fall of the Antichrist. The multiple levels in this vision correspond to the different aspects of time that are coming to an end: (1) time as an abstract concept, represented by the circle diagram; (2) salvation history as an act of grace by the Trinity, represented by Christ’s speech to his Father; and (3) salvation history as events on earth, retold as a narrative. By making each further level of allegory take place within the allegoresis of the higher level, the separation of allegory and allegoresis characteristic of the rest of the book breaks down. Every process of interpretation can produce its own allegory in order to observe things from another standpoint. This process will only be cut off by the end of time, but before we arrive there (and Hildegard’s last book of visions never does), allegory will be in constant need of new exegesis and exegesis will produce its own allegories.

53  Revelation 12, 10–11. “Nunc facta est salus et uirtus et regnum Dei nostri et potestas Christi eius, quia proiectus est accusator fratrum nostrorum, qui accusabat illos ante conspectum Dei nostri die ac nocte; et ipsi uicerunt illum propter sanguinem agni et propter uerbum testimonii sui, et non dilexerunt animas suas usque ad mortem.”/“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.’”

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References Dronke, Peter. 1969. The Composition of Hildegard of Bingen’s Symphonia. Sacris Erudiri 19: 381–393. ———. 1998. The Allegorical World-Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Problems. In Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett, 1–16. London: Warburg Institute. Flynn, William, Tova Fleigh-Choate, and Margot Fassler. 2014. Hearing the Heavenly Symphony: An Overview of Hildegard’s Musical Oeuvre with Case Studies. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. George Ferzoco, Beverly Kienzle, and Debra Stoudt, 162–192. Leiden: Brill. Galand de Reigny. 1992. Parabolarium. Edited by Colette Friedlander, Jean Leclercq, and Gaetano Raciti. Paris: Cerf. Gössmann, Elizabeth. 1995. Hildegard of Bingen. Toronto: Peregrina Publishing. Hildegard of Bingen. 1978. Scivias. Edited by Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 43. Turnhout: Brepols ———. 1991. Epistolarium. Pars prima: I–XC. Edited by Lieven Van Acker. CCCM 91A. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1993. Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR. Edited by Lieven Van Acker. CCCM 91B. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1995. Liber vite meritorum. Edited by Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 90. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1996. Liber divinorum operum. Edited by Peter Dronke and Albert Derolez. CCCM 92. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2007. Ordo Virtutum. In Opera Minora I, CCCM 226, ed. Peter Dronke. Turnhout: Brepols. Iversen, Gunilla. 1992. Ego Humilitatis regina Virtutum: Poetic Language and Literary Structure in Hildegard of Bingen’s Vision of the Virtues. In The Ordo Virtutum of Hildegard of Bingen: Critical Studies, ed. Audrey Ekdahl Davidson. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University. Kraft, Kent Thomas. 1977. The Eye Sees More than the Heart Knows: The Visionary Cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen. University of Wisconsin. Liebeschütz, Hans. 1930. Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen. Leipzig: BG Teubner. Newman, Barbara. 1989. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schipperges, Heinrich. 1958. Gott ist am Werk. Olten: Walter. Zátonyi, Maura. 2012. Vidi et intellexi: die Schrifthermeneutik in der Visionstrilogie Hildegards von Bingen. Münster: Aschendorff.

CHAPTER 6

Allegorical Cognition through Words

Different views on meaning in language yield different views on allegory. For instance, when Angus Fletcher defines allegory as that which says one thing and means another, he sees this as a process that subverts language: “It destroys the normal expectation we have about language, that our words ‘mean what they say.’”1 On the contrary, C.S. Lewis sees allegory as the normal working of language, because “[i]t is of the very nature of thought and language to represent what is immaterial in picturable terms.”2 At the basis of Fletcher’s opinion is the idea of traditional rhetoric that tropes are a deviation from normal language use. Lewis’s opinion is more in line with modern critical thought, namely that all language is essentially figural, and that tropes are not deviations from the norm but the linguistic norm itself. How allegory is perceived depends on how metaphor is viewed and on how figures of speech are thought to function. That is, it depends on theories about the nature of changing meaning in language itself. Because allegory functions by explicitly asking from its readers a conscious engagement with their cultural symbolism, its form relates to conceptions of language 1  Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 2. 2  C.  S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (New York: Oxford university press, 1936), 47.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5_6

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and ways of knowing. Of course, this itself depends on the status of allegory. If allegory is viewed as a literary spielerei and polysemy as a poetic play of words, it will be formally different from when allegory is accorded a philosophical function and polysemy is considered as a way to investigate the layers of reality. There is not one coherent domain of medieval allegorical hermeneutics underlying every expression of allegory in the Middle Ages. Rather, allegorical hermeneutics is implicated, like allegorical forms, in changing ideas about knowledge and language. This chapter takes a new look at what Hildegard says about the production of knowledge and connects it to her views on allegory and the form of her allegory and allegoresis. Two monographs have previously discussed Hildegard’s ideas on knowledge: Fabio Chávez Alvarez has written about the concept rationalitas and Viki Ranff about scientia and sapientia.3 In contrast to these studies, my analysis will not base itself on specific terms but start from the question of how knowledge functions. Instead of restricting myself to hermeneutical issues such as the hidden meanings in Scripture, I will argue that behind statements referring to basic hermeneutical theories on words and texts lies a larger theory on perception, the mind, thoughts, and words. This development becomes clear in the contrast between Scivias and Liber divinorum operum. Whereas the first book does not go beyond the traditional hermeneutic framework, the last book of visions appropriates allegorical hermeneutics for the construction of a theory on allegorical cognition and epistemology. I will demonstrate how this development is in line with the turn to language and cognition in the prescholastic philosophy of the time, although Hildegard’s theories firmly emphasise that cognition is circular and leads to action instead of being linear and hierarchic. Lastly, this chapter will argue that there are interesting parallels between the peculiarities of Hildegard’s allegorical and exegetical forms, as described in the previous chapters, and the way in which she describes allegorical cognition.

3  Fabio Chávez Alvarez, ‘Die brennende Vernunft’: Studien zur Semantik der ‘rationalitas’ bei Hildegard von Bingen (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1991); Viki Ranff, Wege zu Wissen und Weisheit: eine verborgene Philosophie bei Hildegard von Bingen (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2001).

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Hildegard’s Model of the Mind In the course of this chapter, I will discuss the absence of images in Hildegard’s theory of cognition, her turn to language theory, and her adaptation of allegorical hermeneutics into allegorical cognition: elements that align with trends in language philosophy. However, I will begin by pointing out the ways in which Hildegard’s thinking resists the framework of these trends in prescholastic philosophy, namely its habit of abstraction from the material and the sensual, and the linearity and hierarchy of its thinking. I will highlight three elements: her rich and nuanced concept of rationality, the organic nature of the cognition process, and its circularity. First, a key concept in Hildegard’s theology is rationality. Although using the concept in a traditional way, she makes it central to her whole worldview and anthropology, as if to offer a challenge to the use or misuse of the term in prescholastic thinking. Chávez Alvarez points out that, contrary to early Christian and medieval authors such as Tertullian, Boethius, and Gilbert of Poitiers, rationality is not exclusively a power of finite cognition for Hildegard.4 Rationality is God’s creative power, the force behind creation. In humans, rationality is the reflection of the divine, our highest cognitive and spiritual power. Although people are composed of two natures—soul and body—they are constituted through three modes, namely soul, body, and rationality: Deus enim ante tempora formam hominis, in qua carnem assumeret, preuiderat, et quicumque in hoc dubitat seipsum abnegat, nec credit quod in duabus naturis, anime et corporis, per tres modos unus homo est, quia si unum de tribus istis—scilicet anima, corpore, racionalitate, de quibus homo constat—deesset, homo non esset. God had foreseen the human form, in which he would assume flesh, before time. Whoever doubts this, denies himself, and does not believe that one person has two natures, that of the soul and that of the body, in three ways, because if one of these three—namely, the soul, the body, and rationality, which constitute a person—would be missing, he would not be a person.5

 Chávez Alvarez, Die brennende Vernunft.  Hildegard of Bingen, Opera Minora II, ed. Jeroen L. W. Deploige et al., CCCM 226A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 124. 4 5

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Humans operate in the world by using their rationality, in God’s likeness. Rationality enables people to know what is right, make the right decisions, and do good deeds. Rationality thus embraces both the virtue of discretio (knowing what is right) and operatio (being active in the world). Rationality connects humans to God, their fellow humans, fellow creatures, and the cosmos. Hildegard represents rationality in the personification of Caritas, thus equating knowing with loving. Rationality is also closely associated with viriditas, the life-giving “greenness” of growth and flowering. Viriditas is the result of a cosmos that functions in accordance with rationality. It is clear that rationality is no mere intellectual power. Rather, it is the union of intellect and faith, of understanding and love, and of human and divine. Second, for Hildegard cognition is organic: the thought process is not divided into stages and the different terms that Hildegard uses are not meant to distinguish such stages. Connected to this is the circularity of the model. There are no stages because the thought process does not run in one straight line from sense perception to intellection. Insight is not the final goal, but it serves to decide what deeds one must do or what words one must speak, and these deeds or words in their turn need to be thought over and assessed. So, the whole thought process is always a circular movement in interaction with one’s doings in the world. The process is motivated by moral knowledge: people are rational so that they can think about what they do, know whether their deeds are right or wrong, and make choices based on that knowledge. Rationality and the knowledge of right and wrong are involved in a constant cyclical movement, “in circueunte circulo.”6 Whereas other cognitive models ascend towards ever more abstract knowledge, Hildegard diverts the course of cognition back to earth. The goal is always moral insight and living a moral life. I will first have a look at other models of cognition that were available at the time, before discussing in detail how Hildegard describes the structure of the mind.

Other Models of Cognition Let us first look at the Boethian tradition, which was to become of capital importance to scholasticism but was rarely used before that time. Basing himself on Aristotle, Boethius coins the following four categories of 6  “in a circulating circle” Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. Peter Dronke and Albert Derolez, CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), I,4,76.

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cognition: sensus, imaginatio, ratio, and intellegentia. In De Consolatione Philosophiae, he sums up how these mental faculties transform the object of knowledge: Ipsum quoque hominem aliter sensus, aliter imaginatio, aliter ratio, aliter intellegentia contuetur. Sensus enim figuram in subiecta materia constitutam, imaginatio vero solam sine materia iudicat figuram. Ratio vero hanc quoque transcendit speciemque ipsam quae singularibus inest universali consideratione perpendit. Intellegentiae vero celsior oculus exsistit; supergressa namque universitatis ambitum ipsam illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur. Sense, imagination, reason, and intelligence consider the human being in different ways. Sense assesses the shape established in the underlying matter, imagination only the shape without matter. Reason further surpasses this and examines the form itself, which is present in individuals, with a general consideration. But the eye of intelligence is situated even higher, because, by passing beyond the extent of the whole, it looks at that simple form itself with the pure understanding of the mind.7

To think is to put the object of knowledge through a process of abstraction. The senses perceive something in its material state, but things can only be thought apart from matter, namely as images within the imagination. The ratio filters those features that things have in common in order to determine how to categorise the object. Lastly, the highest faculty of intellegentia perceives the simple form itself, its essential nature. Thus, the object of knowledge is transformed from “figura in materia” to “figura” to “species” to “forma.” During the Middle Ages, this model merged with Augustine’s, which used much of the same Aristotelian terminology paired with a Platonic outlook.8 For Augustine, too, sense perceptions leave an imprint in the mental faculty called imaginatio, yet the thought process does not proceed by means of abstraction but rather through illumination. Because of the fact that created things are formed after ideas in the mind of God (called formae, species, or rationes), to which our mind may have access through divine illumination, we may perceive the likenesses between 7  Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Philosophiae consolatio (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957), V,4. 8  Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 148–252.

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created things and their uncreated counterparts, thereby gaining insight into their nature. The knowledge of intelligible things comes to us purely through illumination. For Augustine, the goal of cognition is moral judgement, and ultimately to come closer to God. Sed anima rationalis inter eas res, quae sunt a Deo conditae, omnia superat et Deo proxima est, quando pura est; eique in quantum caritate cohaeserit, in tantum ab eo lumine illo intellegibili perfusa quodammodo et illustrata cernit non per corporeos oculos, sed per ipsius sui principale quo excellit, id est, per intellegentiam suam, istas rationes, quarum visione fit beatissima. Quas rationes, ut dictum est, sive ideas sive formas sive species sive rationes licet vocare, et multis conceditur appellare quod libet, sed paucissimis videre quod verum est. The rational soul, among all that is created by God, surpasses everything and is close to God, when she is pure. The more she embraces love, the more she does not perceive with the eyes of the body, but, imbued with and as if illuminated by that intelligible light, she sees by means of her highest faculty, her intelligence, the underlying reality of which the apprehension makes her blessed.9

This account of cognition follows “the typical Augustinian move from the exterior to the interior and from the inferior to the superior.”10 Notice, too, that very few people possess the ability of using their intelligentia to know what is true. The higher the cognitive faculty, the less people have access to it. This notion is in keeping with what is said about the intellectus in Calcidius’ Timaeus, namely that it “is the property of God and very few chosen human beings,” while opinio is common to all.11 Generally, epistemology stood in the service of the ascent towards knowing the divine, which also meant that it constructed a hierarchy between people and excluded most of them from the higher faculties of cognition. Another theory of the mind, also derived from Augustine, was much more common to non-scholastic times and circles. This was the triad of voluntas, memoria, and intellectus/intelligentia, which according to  Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, CCSL 44A, 1975, quaestio 48.  Roland Teske, “Augustine’s Philosophy of Memory,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 151. 11  Cited in Peter Dronke, “Thierry of Chartres,” in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge and New  York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 366. 9

10

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Augustine reflects the Trinity in the human mind.12 This theory fills in some gaps that could become problematic in Boethius’ simpler model. First, Boethian terminology does not account for the difference between seeing without perceiving and looking with the intent of perceiving. Augustine’s concept of voluntas, also called dilectio, describes the active urge to know something and to think about something, out of love for God, and it describes the resulting insight. Second, Boethius’ schema does not include memory, which raises the question of what happens to our mental images when we are not thinking with them. Augustine’s concept of memoria encompasses both the static concept imaginatio and the difference between images that are merely stored in memory and images with which we actively think. Third, intellectus is more or less equal to the ratio in the other theory, a replacement common for medieval authors. In sum, this theory is more dynamic and active than the one favoured by the scholastics. It is also more organic: because it is developed within trinitarian theology, the emphasis is on the fact that the three components cannot be distinguished from each other except in theory. We find this theory of the mind especially in treatises about the soul, which were very popular during the Early Middle Ages and into the High Middle Ages. Apart from Augustine, influences on early medieval psychology were Calcidius, Cassiodore, and pseudo-Dionysius.13 Another frequent triad is, for instance, the Platonic division of the desiring, the rational, and the irascible part of the mind (concupiscibilitas, rationalitas, irascibilitas). Boethius’ model re-emerged with Anselm of Canterbury and early scholasticism, after which it quickly became omnipresent. Twelfth-century authors changed and elaborated this philosophical model, for instance, by reinforcing the hierarchical aspect by creating new categories. As an example, in his letter On the Soul, Isaac of Stella adds a fifth category to Boethius’ four, namely intelligentia as differing from intellectus.14 Moreover, the steps of cognition became a blueprint for all kinds of other hierarchies through the use of Boethius’ epistemological model. Boethius had mapped his categories onto a hierarchy of being and a hierarchy of sciences. The hierarchy of being is as follows: living beings that cannot move possess 12  Augustine, Sancti Aurelii Augustini De Trinitate libri XV, CCSL 50A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968). 13  Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West: The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the Soul 1160–1300 (London–Turin: The Warburg Institute—Nino Aragno Editore, 2000), 10. 14  Isaac of Stella, Epistola de anima, Patrologia Latina 194 (Paris, 1875).

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only sensus, animals have imaginatio, and people possess ratio, whereas intelligentia is a characteristic of the divine.15 Concerning the sciences, Boethius says that theoretical philosophy consists of the following: the natural sciences, which look at things in their material state; mathematics, which abstracts forms from materiality; and theology, which looks at transcendent divinity. Scholars like Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres, Clarembald of Arras, and Alan of Lille used this Boethian framework to develop new classifications of the sciences, and Alan also projected the cognitive faculties onto the cosmos.16 In conclusion, all these theories share a few common aspects. First, the same terms come up each time and refer to a strictly delineated level or category of thinking, so that the idea of the sequential nature of cognition is sometimes adumbrated. The senses leave an imprint in the form of an image in the imaginatio, the ratio perceives the nature of something, and intellectus/intelligentia ascends to God. Second, the cognitive process is a hierarchy that is mapped onto other hierarchies, such as that of living beings, of people, of moral progress, of the cosmos, of the sciences, or of visionary and mystical experience.

The Circular Mind In Scivias, Hildegard is exclusively concerned with the trajectory from knowledge to deeds. In a fictive dialogue between God and a person, the person complains of not being able to perform good deeds.17 God answers: “You can.” The person asks how, and God says: “By means of your intelligence and hard work.” The person then complains about the difficulty in making up their mind. God’s answer: “Learn to fight against yourself.” The person protests: “I cannot fight against myself unless God helps me.” God then explains how it should be done: Cum malum in te surgit, ita quod nescis quomodo illud abicias, tunc tactu gratiae meae tactus, quia in uiis interiorum oculorum tuorum gratia mea 15  Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Philosophiae consolatio, V,5; Luigi Catalani, “Modelli di conoscenza tra Gilberto di Poitiers e Alano di Lille,” in Alain de Lille, le docteur universel: philosophie, théologie et littérature au XIIe siècle, ed. Jean-Luc Solère, vol. 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 222. 16  Catalani, “Modelli di conoscenza tra Gilberto di Poitiers e Alano di Lille.” 17  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), I,4,30.

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tangit te, mox clama, ora, confitere et plora, ut tibi Deus succurrat et ut malum a te auferat et ut tibi uires in bono tribuat. Istud habes de scientia tua qua Deum per inspirationem Spiritus sancti intellegis. When evil rises up in you, and you don’t know how to subdue it, then be touched by my grace, because my grace touches your inner eyes, and cry out, pray, confess, and weep that God may come to your aid and take the evil away from you and give you the strength to do well. This you have from your knowledge with which you understand God through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.18

God’s grace is essential for understanding. Grace is closely joined to thinking: it reaches people “in the ways of their inner eyes,” in their thoughts, so that they know what is the right thing to do, namely “to cry out, to pray, to confess and weep.” The moment of understanding is therefore conceived as an act of grace. In Scivias, the soul is imagined as a body and its powers as limbs. Intellectus is attached to the soul like an arm to the body.19 Its function is to analyse the nature of human deeds: it asks whether they are “useful or useless, to be loved or to be hated, pertaining to life or to death.”20 The intellect is a moral compass, working together with the other powers of the mind. Hildegard sums up these other powers briefly by saying that “voluntas […] opus calefacit et animus illud suscipit et ratio producit” (“the will […] rouses up the deed and the mind supports it and reason brings it forth”).21 She expresses this in more words when she likens the powers of the soul to a tree: the soul is its sap and the powers are like the form of the tree. The intellect is like the greenness (viriditas) of the branches and the leafs, the will like the flowers, the mind (animus) like the fruit when it first comes out, the ratio like the fruit when it is ripe, and the senses like the height and width of the tree.22 Each of these faculties contributes to producing deeds, and the intellect assures that they will be good deeds. In Liber divinorum operum, we find both a different terminology and different ideas about the mind. Whereas Scivias uses the word intellectus  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,30.  Hildegard of Bingen, 1,4,19. “Because just like an arm, to which the hand and fingers are attached, reaches out from the body, so the intelligence proceeds from the soul together with the several operational powers of the soul, with which it understands everything done by the person.” 20  Hildegard of Bingen, 1,4,19. 21  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,20. 22  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,26. 18 19

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regularly, both to refer to understanding and to the faculty of the mind that produces understanding, this is not the case in the last book of visions. Following a general trend of disappearing words and meanings, the word is restricted both in use and in meaning.23 It now occurs mostly in repeated phrases such as “quod sic intellectui patet” (“which opens itself to the intelligence in the following way”) and “huius sententie intellectus hoc modo accipiendus est” (“the meaning of this sentence is to be understood as follows”) at the beginning of an exegetical passage. Other words are now used to refer to the faculty of human understanding that was previously called intellectus. In Liber divinorum operum, the goal of thinking is still to perform good deeds, but the process of perception, understanding, and evaluation comes into focus as well. In the fourth vision, Hildegard offers three dissections of the soul. In the first, the soul is composed of three powers: […] comprehensio, qua in potentia Dei celestia et terrestria comprehendit; et intelligentia, qua plurima intelligit, cum etiam peccata mala esse nouit, ubi ea per penitentiam negligit; ac motio, qua in se ubique mouetur cum sancta opera in exemplis iustorum cum habitaculo suo perficit. […] the insight by which someone apprehends earthly and heavenly things in the force of God; and the intelligence with which someone understands many different things, such as that sins are bad, when a person neglects them through penitence; and motion, with which someone moves to every side when performing holy works with the body, in imitation of the just.24

Again, Hildegard does not choose recognisable terminology. This triad is most akin to the medical model of Galen. In the medical tradition, the three ventricles of the brain in which mental activity was situated were linked to specific mental faculties.25 Galen stated that the anterior part of the brain was linked to sensation and the posterior part to movement. According to Augustine, the front ventricle takes care of the senses and the one at the back is occupied with motion, just as Galen suggested, but 23  Jeroen de Gussem and Dinah Wouters, “Language and Thought in Hildegard of Bingen’s Visionary Trilogy: Close and Distant Readings of a Thinker’s Development,” Parergon 36, no. 1 (2019). 24  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,17. 25  Christopher D.  Green, “Where Did the Ventricular Localization of Mental Faculties Come From?,” Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences 39, no. 2 (2003): 131–42.

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the middle one is where the workings of memoria take place.26 Hildegard’s model also goes from comprehension to motion. The concept in between comprehension and motion, intelligentia—and voluntas in Scivias, too— could have been influenced by Augustine’s triad of the soul. However, the third part memoria, which was so important to Augustine, is conspicuously absent. Later in the text, Hildegard projects the mental faculties onto the parts of the head, but, contrary to what one would expect, this does not correspond to the Galenic model. The order of the powers of the soul from front to back is “exspiratio, scientia et sensus” (“exhalation, knowledge, and the senses”).27 It would seem that this set of terms is the same as the previous set but in reversed order. I also think that the focus is different, because Hildegard adds to this last one that these are the powers with which the soul performs its deeds.28 The first triad, then, would be about comprehending the world, its moral order, and what to do (comprehensio, intelligentia, motio), while the second describes the powers that are needed to act.29 The exhalation is described as the means of starting an action (“per exspirationem enim hec incipit que facere potest”—“through the exhalation they begin to do what they can do”). This might simply refer to action or it might specifically refer to the use of spoken language. Hildegard makes it very clear that the cognitive process is not an ascent of the mind towards abstracted knowledge.30 The first triad goes from comprehension to moral insight and then directly to activity, while the second is wholly focused on that activity. Despite the fact that Hildegard distinguishes between different faculties of the mind, she stresses that these all work together simultaneously and that none can exceed the others. After introducing the first triad, she says: […] comprehensioque ista et intelligentia ad motionem anime se in unum coniungunt, ita ut, si anima plus comprehenderet quam intelligere aut

26  Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, CSEL 28,1 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1894), VII, 18. 27  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,17. 28  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,17. 29  A discussion of the active role of the senses can be found in the following section. 30  Cf., Ranff, Wege zu Wissen und Weisheit, 276. “Mit den irdischen Sinnen ist Gott nicht erreichbar. Die geistlichen Sinne der abgestumpften oder getäuschten Seele kommen ihm ebenfalls nicht auf die Spur, obwohl sie dazu geschaffen sind.”

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mouere posset, in iniusta mensura esset. Atque eedem uires in anima hoc modo unanimes sunt nec alia aliam excedit. […] this comprehension and intelligence become one in the movement of the soul, so that, if the soul would comprehend more than it could understand or move, it would be unjustly balanced. In this way, these powers are unanimous in the soul and not one exceeds the others.31

And while discussing the second triad, she says: Iste namque uires hoc modo equales sunt, scilicet quoniam anima exspirando non plus facere incipit quam scientia comprehendere aut quam sensus sufferre possit, et sic unanimiter operantur, quia nulla istarum aliam excedit, quemadmodum et caput rectam mensuram habet. These powers are equal in such a way that the soul would not begin to do more than knowledge can comprehend or the senses can bear, and so they work together in unanimity, because none of these exceeds the others, just as a head has the right proportions.32

We know this way of thinking well from monastic treatises on the soul that draw an analogy with trinitarian theology. Hildegard pushes the point further, however, because, for her, the goal of thinking is not insight but action. There can be no good knowledge that does not lead to good deeds. This indicates that knowledge of any kind is only valuable—and can only be obtained—if it contributes to deeds. The third division of the soul that Hildegard provides is a binary division of vires: one ascends upwards to God, the other governs the body.33 Again, the stress is on how these two forces of the body and the soul balance each other. The motion of the soul is upwards, but its responsibility lies with the body. Hildegard says that when the soul surges upwards “with fiery rationality,” so that the body can no longer tolerate the ascent, the soul descends again and comforts the body.34 From the general workings of the mind, I will now turn to the processes of perception, imagining, conceptualising through words, and processing knowledge.

 Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,17.  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,17. 33  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,19. 34  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,28. 31 32

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Perceptions as Cognitive Agents In the fourth vision of Scivias, in the context of a discussion on the powers of the mind, Hildegard lists the traditional five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch (visus auditus, gustus, odoratus, tactus).35 The senses are subservient to the “uires animae” (i.e., the inner senses, but Hildegard almost never uses this expression). She says that their relation to these mental powers is the same as the relation of the body to the soul, namely that of a sign to the thing it signifies.36 She explains how this works. Homo in facie cognoscitur, oculis uidet, auribus audit, os ad loquendum aperit, manibus palpat, pedibus ambulat, et ideo sensus est in homine uelut pretiosi lapides et ut pretiosus thesaurus in uase signatus. People are recognised by their faces, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, open their mouth to speak, feel with their hands, walk with their feet, and therefore the senses are in a person like precious stones and like a precious treasure sealed in a box.37

This statement extends the range of the senses to encompass all communication, in both directions, that humans have with their environment and with others. A face is the sense by which humans express their identity, the eyes see and the ears hear in order to react to the world, the mouth speaks, the hands touch, both to feel and to act, and the feet ensure mobility. Thus, the senses are the sign of the soul because they make visible what goes on in the soul by communicating with the world. This short passage offers two different accounts of the senses: first, the neat list of the five senses as receptacles of sensations, and, second, this extended view of the senses as the conduits of communication between inside and outside, in both directions. Although the first one is more familiar, the second one, grounded in the notion of the agency of the 35  “Quomodo? Ipsa hominem uiuente facie uiuificat et uisu, auditu, gustu, odoratu et tactu glorificat, ita quod homo sensu tactus peruigil in omnibus rebus fit.” Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I,4,24. It is more common to find smell listed before taste, and Hildegard does switch to this order in the Liber divinorum operum. For a complete overview of Hildegard on sense perception, see María José Ortúzar Escudero, Die Sinne in den Schriften Hildegards von Bingen: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sinneswahrnehmung (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2016). 36  Hildegard of Bingen, Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I,4,24. “Sensus enim signum omnium uirium animae est, sicut et corpus uas animae est.”/“The senses are the sign of all the powers of the soul, just as the body is the vessel of the soul.” 37  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,24.

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senses, fits in with a broader medieval framework.38 The Augustinian paradigm, in vogue until even after the resurgence of Aristotle’s causal theory of perception,39 granted the senses an active part in perception.40 It contains the idea that the will plays a crucial part in perception, by which we have to direct our conscience towards what we want to perceive, and the idea that the senses actively shape the mental image with which we think. This led to a strong tradition in the Middle Ages, which saw the mind not as a passive recipient but as the agent and cause of perception.41 But not only is perception conceived as an active process, the senses are also the medium through which we act. This idea was already expressed by Gregory the Great, who said that all the good works done by the body are shown by the five senses.42 Another example is Raban Maur, who, while listing the senses, defines touch only as that “by which is done what needs to be done.”43 Within this framework, speech was often included among the senses of the mouth.44 In this respect, then, Hildegard is no exception, 38  For an overview of the literature on the medieval senses: Eric Palazzo, “Les cinq sens au Moyen Âge: état de la question et perspectives de recherche,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 55, no. OCTDEC (2012): 339–66; Richard Newhauser, “The Senses, the Medieval Sensorium, and Sensing (in) the Middle Ages,” in Handbook of Medieval Culture, ed. Albrecht Classen, v. 3 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 1559–75. 39  José Filipe Silva, “Medieval Theories of Active Perception: An Overview,” in Active Perception in the History of Philosophy, ed. José Filipe Silva and Mikko Yrjönsuuri, Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind 14 (Berlin: Springer, 2014), 117–46. 40  Mary Carruthers, “Intention, sensation et mémoire dans l’esthétique médiévale,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 55 (2012): 367–78; Eugene Vance, “Seeing God: Augustine, Sensation, and the Mind’s Eye,” in Rethinking the Medieval Senses: Heritage, Fascinations, Frames, ed. Stephen G. Nichols, Andreas Kablitz, and Alison Calhoun (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 13–29. 41  Silva, “Medieval Theories of Active Perception: An Overview,” 79. 42  Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Hiezechihelem Prophetam, CCSL 142 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), II,5,7. Cited in Ortúzar Escudero, Die Sinne in den Schriften Hildegards von Bingen. 43  Raban Maur, Tractatus de anima, Patrologia Latina 110, 1852. 44  Chris M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 84–104; Newhauser, “The Senses, the Medieval Sensorium, and Sensing (in) the Middle Ages,” 1560. Christopher Woolgar assumes that the idea of the agentic nature of the senses is “driven in particular by texts in the vernacular, which may owe their model of the senses more to popular tradition than to the classical and clerical inheritance” (p. 12). However, this idea can be found in the treatises on the soul, too, and it occurs also in Bernard Silvester’s Cosmographia. See Bernard Silvester, The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), Microcosmos XIV (p. 124).

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although she does broaden the senses to the extreme in the above citation from Scivias. This might be a consequence of Scivias’ focus on the outward movement from thought to action. The senses are considered less in their role of receptors of information than as the tools with which to act. In Scivias, Hildegard’s broad notion of the senses sits uneasily with the standard list of five senses. In Liber divinorum operum, she does use the standard list as the backbone to her theory, although touch is often left out. To include speech in this model seems to pose a problem. When the senses are called by their names (sight, hearing, etc.), speech is not included; conversely, when speech is mentioned, the senses are identified by the parts of the body (eyes, ears, etc.). These two models never occur simultaneously. The senses take part in rationality: Sic et racionalitas columpna et medulla quinque sensuum existit, qui per eam sustentantur et ad operandum diriguntur, quemadmodum terra per aratrum euersa germinando fructuosa efficitur. Rationality is the pillar and the marrow of the five senses, which are supported by it and incited to act, just as the earth, when overturned by the plough, sprouts and becomes fertile.45

Their participation in rationality consists of identifying things and discerning useful from useless things. Sight is rational (and the most important of the senses) because it enables us to discern what is useful from what is useless and to choose accordingly.46 Hearing is rational because it picks up sounds by which to identify creatures and words that can be comprehended and obeyed. Smell helps us to find cures for diseases, and taste and touch let us know what to eat. It is clear that the focus in Liber divinorum operum is much more on perception and cognition than in Scivias, although action still holds pride of place as the ultimate goal of that cognition. The senses still hold an extraordinary amount of agency, but now also on the inner side, as a part of the cognitive process. This shift is apparent in the following sentence: In capite itaque hominis, uidelicet in circueunte rota cerebri, uertex est, ad quem scala posita est, que gradus ascensionis habet, scilicet oculis uidendo,

 Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,98.  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,98.

45 46

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auribus audiendo, naribus odorando, ore loquendo; in quibus homo omnes creaturas uidet, cognoscit, discernit, diuidit et nominat. On the head of a person, namely in the round circle of the skull, there is a highpoint against which a ladder is placed, which has grades of ascension, namely by seeing with the eyes, hearing with the ears, smelling with the nose, talking with the mouth. With these, a person sees all creatures, recognises, discerns, divides, and names them.47

Perception starts with seeing, which is perception in the constricted sense in which we use it, but then continues with recognising or becoming aware of the object of perception—Augustine’s “will,” which needs to be directed at the object in order to perceive—discerning it from its surroundings, and dividing it from other objects by the act of giving it a name. All of this, apparently, happens “in the senses.” This is similar to expositions on the senses in the psychological tradition. Compare, for instance, Raban Maur’s treatise on the soul. Contrary to later discussions of the senses in the philosophical tradition, he says that the human senses are different from those of animals because they are rational.48 Further, Raban says that the sense of hearing “attracts sounds” and at the same time “discerns and understands” them.49 While discussing smell and taste, he talks about knowing what to avoid and what to select. Hildegard agrees that the process from sense experience to insight cannot be compartmentalised. She sees it as a constant flow of information wholly driven by reason. We see now why speech is numbered among the senses. It is not only the idea, as in Scivias, that the senses are the means by which to act as well as the means by which to perceive, but also the fact that perception itself is part of cognition, and cognition is seen as active and creative, creating knowledge rather than discovering it. Name-giving is considered a speech act and a veritable act of cognition at the same time. The same applies to all the senses. For example, at one point the text treats the relationship between humans and animals. Sic Deus hominem cum uiribus omnium creaturarum firmauit eumque ipsis uelut omni armatura induit; ita ut per uisum creaturas cognoscat, per audi-

 Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,14.  Raban Maur, Tractatus de anima, XII, 1120A. 49  Raban Maur, XII, 1120B. 47 48

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tum eas intelligat, per odoratum discernat, per gustum ab eis pascatur et per tactum eis dominetur. In such a way, God strengthened the human with the powers of all the creatures and covered him with them as with armor: his sight recognises creatures, his hearing understands them, his smell discerns them, his taste feeds on them, and his touch dominates them.50

Sight, hearing, and smell are credited with direct access to knowledge, while taste and touch have already received the output of cognition and have begun acting upon their knowledge. Perception, cognition, and action turn in a circle in which they can barely be distinguished from each other. Lastly, although Hildegard twice mentions that sight is the most important among the senses, her enthusiasm for sight is not as great as that of, for instance, Augustine, who holds that sight is the sense “most compatible with the rational life of the active soul,” because it is most similar to the “visio mentis.”51 Generally, sight was the most valued sense because it stood furthest from the object of perception. Although Hildegard echoes this reasoning,52 she does not connect the sense of sight particularly with the use of reason. For her, this is the privilege of the mouth, which utters words. Sight is singled out rather as a guide for the other senses.53 The various senses perceive the same object from different angles, but sight guides the other senses towards the object. Thus, among the traditional five senses, sight is more important, but not because it stands closer to the  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,97.  Vance, “Seeing God: Augustine, Sensation, and the Mind’s Eye,” 17. 52  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,98. “Visus enim, scilicet sensus oculorum, per quem homo omnia uidet et cognoscit, inter alios iure principatum tenet, quia, ut loco sublimior ceteris est, ita et remotiora magis quam alii percipit.”/“Sight, namely the sense of the eyes, through which a person sees and recognises everything, takes pride of place between them. Because it is located higher than the others, it perceives what is farther off better than them.” 53  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,37. “Sed et per uisum oculorum auditus, odoratus racionalitasque oris et tactus reguntur et cognoscuntur, sic utique ut sciatur uel quid sint uel quomodo sint, sicut et per solem ac lunam et per stellas omnis constitutio firmamenti regitur et illuminatur. Homo enim per oculos uidet que cum sapientia cognoscit, eadem que per auditum, odoratum et per gustum capit.”/“Hearing, smell, and the rationality of mouth and touch are governed by the sight of the eyes, so that it is known what things are or how they are, just as the whole constitution of the firmament is governed and illuminated by the sun, the moon, and the stars. Human see with their eyes what they know through their knowledge, and they perceive the same things with their hearing, smell, and taste.” 50 51

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rational soul or the mental vision. It is the extra sense of speech that is most rational. This relates to a significant peculiarity of Hildegard’s cognitive theory, namely the absence of mental images.

The Absence of Mental Images Something that is remarkably absent from Hildegard’s thinking is the idea that sense perceptions are projected as images in the mind, and that we think with these images. The term imaginatio appears nowhere in her texts. She does make frequent use of the expression “inner eyes,” but not to refer to its more technical sense of mental images. Inner eyes only see metaphorically. When Hildegard says inner eye, she means the knowledge of invisible things, which is the way to faith: “Ille homo qui per suam scientiam, quae interior oculus est, istud uidet quod exteriori uisui absconsum est, et in hoc non dubitat, hic certissime credit, et hoc fides est” (“The person who sees with his knowledge, which is his inner eye, what is hidden to the outer sight, will not doubt what he sees, but will believe in it with certainty, and that is faith”).54 This raises a question, however: if, according to Hildegard, the thought process starts with visible things, then in what form do those things appear to the mind, if not through mental images? The monks of Villers had the chance to ask Hildegard directly. Their thirty-second question of a whole list directed to the magistra of Bingen reads as follows: “Nunquid spiritalibus oculis corporalia uidentur, et e diuerso corporalibus oculis aliqua spiritalia cognoscuntur?” (“Can it be that corporeal things are seen with the spiritual eyes, and conversely that some spiritual things are perceived by the corporeal eyes?”).55 The question hints at a deeper problem, which Richard of Saint Victor, for instance, asked himself: if the mind cannot contain corporeal things, and the eyes of the body cannot perceive spiritual things, then how can we think about corporeal things? In the treatise De Contemplatione, also known as Beniamin Maior, Richard gives his own unique version of the cognitive process. In the exegesis of Jacob’s family, Lia is affectio and Rachel is ratio. Their respective handmaids are interpreted as sensualitas and imaginatio. Ratio strives to climb up to the discernment of what is  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, II,3,30.  Hildegard of Bingen, Triginta Octo Questionum Solutiones, Opera Minora II, CCCM 226A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 126. 54 55

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invisible, but is only able to do this by means of visible things and the likeness to invisible things that they exhibit. Visible things are only seen by the “senses of the flesh,” while invisible things are only seen by the “eyes of the heart.” This poses a problem, because while the former is completely internal, the latter is completely external and thus not directly accessible to the ratio. To solve this, ratio has imaginatio as her handmaid, who “runs forth and back as a handmaid between her mistress and the servant, between reason and sense, and what she picks up outside through the sense of the flesh, she represents inside in the service of reason.” In short, Richard’s answer, in line with the philosophical tradition, is to posit imaginatio as an intermediary that copies the corporeal thing into the mind, retaining only an impression. Hildegard does not opt for this solution. She begins by affirming that the spiritual eyes are the knowledge of the rational soul, which by no means are able to see corporeal things. She then compares this inability with that of a blind person. Such a person is still able to understand things, because they can hear. Spiritales oculi scientia racionalis anime sunt, qui nequaquam corporalia ut sunt uidere possunt, sicut etiam cecus exterioribus oculis non uidet sed quod tantum per auditum que uidentur intelligit et cognoscit. The spiritual eyes are the knowledge of the rational soul. By no means can they see corporeal things as they are, just as a blind person cannot see with the exterior eyes but understands and recognises what is seen through hearing alone.56

She specifies that it is not so that corporeal sounds are better able to transfer the impression of the corporeal thing into the mind than visual perceptions. Rather, there is one kind of sounds that is able to transfer not the thing itself and not its impression either, but its meaning directly to the mind: meaningful sounds, or words. Corporales etiam oculi possibilitatem non habent, ut spiritalia perfecte intueantur. Sed ut forma hominis in speculo, in quo non est, uidetur, sic homo ea, que spiritalia sunt, per auditum uerborum in fide uidet et cognoscit. The bodily eyes do not have the possibility of viewing spiritual things perfectly. But just as the form of a person can be seen in a mirror without  Hildegard of Bingen, 126.

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being in the mirror, so a person can see and understand in faith those things that are spiritual by means of the sound of words.57

Instead of extending the metaphor of the visual sense into the realm of the mind, Hildegard switches to the metaphor of hearing and speech. Insight and faith are still metaphorically visual (understanding through words is like seeing), but the medium of understanding is not. In itself, the idea is not at all unusual. What is unusual, is: first, the direct link between sense perception and words; second, how words fully take the place of mental images as the medium that connects sense perception and understanding; and, third, the direct and causal link between words and understanding. Other thinkers, however important they deem words to be in making sense of reality, always reserve some space for a kind of understanding that does not come about through words. For them, understanding through the senses and images is primary, and words symbolise this understanding of things. Hildegard’s answer to the monks of Villers and the general absence of the concept of mental images alert us to the fact that Hildegard conceives of thinking as thinking with words rather than with images.

The Essential Role of Words If images are markedly absent in Hildegard’s statements on thinking, their place is completely occupied by words. I say “words” and not “language” because the latter never becomes the object of her theoretical reflection. Words figure as either the names of things or the communicative and operative function of human speech. Rationality is inextricably linked to words and numbers. Hildegard even goes so far as to say that people cannot understand anything except through names (nomina). […] sicut racionalitas hominis in arte sua per nomina et per numerum omnia comprehendit; quia homo nullam rem alio modo nisi per nomina discernit, nec multiplicitatem rerum nisi per numerum cognoscit. […] just as human rationality has its way of understanding everything through names and numbers; because a person cannot discern anything except through names and cannot recognise the multiplicity of things except through number.58

 Hildegard of Bingen, 126.  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,105.

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In a letter dated to the years 1148–1149, which answers the philosophical issue of whether God is “divinity and paternity,” Hildegard asserts that because of the mortal nature of humans, we can only find God through names, and that is why we call God paternity and divinity without thereby defining him.59 These statements go even further than those of other twelfth-century authors, because they declare words not only to be the most important but also the only and necessary mediator between reality and mental experience. The primacy of words for thinking and the absence of mental images emerges as a crucial element of Hildegard’s writing on cognition. In contrast to other elements, this is something that can be linked to the rise of scholastic philosophy in her time. Compared to the older models of Boethius and Augustine, scholastic writers were steadily promoting words to the place of images. Before discussing what Hildegard says about words, I will discuss this development in contemporary language theory. The Promotion of Words Over Images First, let me introduce Aristotle’s theory of language. As a short interjection in his book On Interpretation, he mentions that words are symbols, not of things, but of affections of the soul, which carry a likeness to the thing. Words are different in every language, but affections are the same for everyone. It is not easy to determine what Aristotle meant by these affections. Boethius poses this question in his commentary on De Interpretatione. The Latin vocabulary here is voces for words, which are notae (symbols) of “passiones animae” (passions of the soul).60 Boethius discusses sensus, imaginatio, and intellectus as possible candidates for the passions of the soul. He immediately rejects the senses, because they represent the passions of the body, not those of the soul.61 The imaginatio, 59  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars prima: I–XC, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 40R (p. 104). “Deus enim nec excuti nec excribrari secundum hominem potest, quia in Deo nihil est quod Deus non sit. Et quoniam creatura initium habet, ex hoc inuenit rationalitas hominis Deum per nomina, sicut et ipsa in proprietate sua plena est nominum”/“God cannot be examined or sifted according to human custom, because in God is nothing that is not God. And because creatures have a beginning, human rationality finds God through names, as her own nature is full of names.” 60  Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boetii commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri Erme ̄neias (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877), I,1 (p. 27). 61  Boethius, I,1 (p. 27).

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although it is a capacity of the soul, is imperfect, whereas “names and words” signify things perfectly.62 Words signify concepts, therefore Boethius concludes that the “passiones animae” must be equated with intellectus. After people have developed a concept of something through their perception of it and its consequent representation in the mind as an image, they can refer back to this concept by means of words. Words are linked to things via the mediation of mental images. Thus, Boethius integrates speech within the thought process, which remains essentially visual. He adds a remark that was to be hugely influential during the Middle Ages. He says there are three sorts of speech (orationes): one is written with letters, another is brought forth by the voice, and a third is “joined in the mind.”63 Boethius deduces that if there are three kinds of speech, there must also be three kinds of verbs and nouns: written, spoken, and “silently thought in the mind.” In the Middle Ages, this model was combined with Augustine’s theory of the “interius verbum” or “verbum in corde,” which is not based on considerations about logic but about theology. In Augustine’s theory, the visual and the verbal paradigm of thinking are not so well integrated as in Boethius’ theory. As Joël Biard states, “In spite of this Boecian idea, for a long time the assimilation of the conceptual domain to actual language remains vague and metaphorical. Thought, the activity of the intellect, seems to have its own mode of being, its own modes of organisation [...].”64 Isabelle Koch describes how the visual and the verbal model of cognition go together in Augustine’s work.65 We gain knowledge of reality through perception and memory images, leading to an interior vision, but we learn nothing through words; they only recall what we already know (the same was true for Boethius). The visual model is omnipresent, whereas the role of language is more restricted. The verbal model is mainly applied to theological discussions about the nature of the Trinity, the

 Boethius, I,1 (p. 29).  Boethius, I,1 (p. 30). 64  J.  Biard, Le langage mental du Moyen Âge à l’âge classique (Louvain: Peeters, 2009), V. “Malgré cette idée boécienne, longtemps l’assimilation du domaine conceptuel à un langage reste vague et métaphorique. La pensée, activité de l’intellect, paraît avoir son propre mode d’être, ses propres modes d’organisation […].” 65  Isabelle Koch, “Le Verbum in corde chez Augustin,” in Le langage mental du Moyen Âge à l’âge classique, ed. J. Biard (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 1–28. 62 63

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generation of the Son, the incarnation, and the creation of the world.66 All these events are metaphorically linked to the speaking of a word that first existed only in the mind. Language is mainly considered as a speech act and an act of communication. This is where language has some advantages over the visual model: it can conceive of thinking as production and not as contemplation.67 However, the negative aspect of language that Augustine distrusts, its habit of distorting reality, is banned from the interior words so that they can be equated with the interior vision. Koch points out the paradox that the inner word is less a disembodied version of outer speech than a verbal figure for the inner eye.68 Augustine says that speech and sight are two different things outside of the body, but that they become one in thinking.69 The “verbum in corde” is thus different from words that are thought silently: it has no syntax or semantics. Just as the visio intellectualis is not actually visual, the nature of the inner word is not linguistic. From Anselm of Canterbury onward, medieval thinkers sought to combine Boethius’ three kinds of speech with Augustine’s inner word, while also, like both of these authors, seeking to harmonise the visual and the verbal model of cognition. In doing so, they promoted the verbal element to a more prominent place. Anselm of Canterbury’s discussion of the three kinds of speech in his Monologion is a well-known case.70 The context is the creation of the world as God’s speech, but the framework is influenced by the discipline of logic. Frequenti namque usu cognoscitur, quia rem unam tripliciter loqui possumus. Aut enim res loquimur signis sensibilibus, id est quae sensibus corporeis sentiri possunt sensibiliter utendo; aut eadem signa, quae foris sensibilia sunt, intra nos insensibiliter cogitando; aut nec sensibiliter nec insensibiliter his signis utendo sed res ipsas vel corporum imaginatione vel rationis intellectu pro rerum ipsarum diversitate intus in nostra mente dicendo. Aliter namque dico hominem, cum eum hoc nomine, quod est ‘homo’, significo; aliter, cum idem nomen tacens cogito; aliter, cum eum ipsum hominem 66  Koch, 3; Luisa Valente, “Verbum Mentis—Vox Clamantis: The Notion of the Mental Word in Twelfth-Century Theology,” in The Word in Medieval Logic, Theology and Psychology, ed. Tesuro Shimizu and Charles Burnett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 365–402. 67  Koch, “Le Verbum in corde chez Augustin,” 28. 68  Koch, 16. 69  Augustine, Sancti Aurelii Augustini De Trinitate libri XV, XV,18. 70  Bérengère Hurand, “La locutio mentis, une version anselmienne du verbe intérieur,” in Le langage mental du Moyen Âge à l’âge classique, ed. J. Biard (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 1–28.

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mens aut per corporis imaginem aut per rationem intuetur. Per corporis quidem imaginem, ut cum eius sensibilem figuram imaginatur; per rationem vero, ut cum eius universalem essentiam, quae est ‘animal rationale mortale’, cogitat. For we know from frequent experience that we can say one and the same thing in three ways. For we say a thing either by making perceptible use of perceptible signs, i.e., signs that can be perceived by the bodily senses; or by thinking imperceptibly within ourselves the very same signs that are perceptible when they are outside ourselves; or by not using these signs at all, whether perceptible or imperceptibly, but rather by saying the things themselves inwardly in our mind by either a corporeal image or an understanding of reason that corresponds to the diversity of the things themselves. For example, in one way I say a man when I signify him by the word ‘man,’ in another way when I think that same word silently, and yet another way when my mind sees the man himself either through an image of a body (as when it imagines his sensible appearance) or through reason (as when it thinks his universal essence, which is rational, mortal animal).71

Anselm models the cognitive process on the verbal instead of the visual paradigm. Instead of starting with perception, it starts with spoken words. Note that Anselm speaks about “res loqui,” and thus talks about producing, not perceiving words. Spoken words can also be thought silently in the mind, by means of the same verbal signs, but without sound. The sensible verbal sign (the word that is spoken) and the non-sensible sign (the word that is thought) seem to relate to each other in the same way as do in the visual model the sense perception and the immaterial mental image of that perception. In the next step, the things themselves are thought, “by saying them in our mind.” Either this happens by imagining the “sensible figure” of the thing, or by thinking of its “universal essence.” Thus, in the last step, both imaginatio and Boethius’ intellectus, here called ratio, constitute the third way of speaking things. More specifically, they constitute the metaphorical and non-linguistic way of speaking things. So, instead of assimilating interior speech to intellectus within the visual model, as Augustine had done, Anselm assimilates imaginatio and intellectus to interior speech within the verbal model. 71  Anselm of Canterbury, “Monologion,” in S.  Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1946), I,10 (p. 24). Translation: Anselm of Canterbury, Monologion and Proslogion (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996), 23.

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The fact remains, however, that true understanding leaves words behind even before it disposes of visual images. This seems inevitable because, as Aristotle says, words are not the same for all people, but images and concepts are. In the context of Anselm’s philosophy, this plays a central role, because it makes it possible that the fool says in his heart “there is no God,” although this is not true, whereas someone who understands that “God is that than which nothing greater can be thought” establishes the truth of it by thinking it. There are two ways of thinking: with words that are akin to spoken words and with words that are intellections.72 In conclusion, Anselm uses the Boethian model of cognition within a theological discussion of God bringing forth the Word. In so doing, the word takes pride of place even within the Boethian model of cognition. The question is no longer how perceptions are processed, but how words are understood. Hugh of Saint Victor does essentially the same in an exegetical context, inserting exegetical theory on the interpretation of words into the Aristotelian framework and thereby enhancing the importance of words in that framework. In his work De archa Noe, he introduces his own three kinds of words, just like Boethius and Anselm, but different from both of them: first, there is the human word; second, there is God’s work, which is his extrinsic word; and third is his invisible wisdom as an intrinsic word.73 The difference with other authors is due to a different theoretical context. Hugh uses this categorisation for explaining the double signification of Scripture in his Didascalion: Sciendum est etiam, quod in diuino eloquio non tantum uerba, sed etiam res significare habent, qui modus non adeo in aliis scripturis inueniri solet. philosophus solam uocum nouit significationem, sed excellentior ualde est rerum significatio quam uocum, quia hanc usus instituit, illam natura dictauit. hec hominum uox est, illa uox Dei ad homines. hec prolata perit, illa creata subsistit. uox tenuis est nota sensuum, res diuine rationis est simulacrum. quod ergo sonus oris, qui simul subsistere incipit et desinit, ad rationem mentis est, hoc omne spatium temporis ad eternitatem. ratio mentis intrinsecum uerbum est, quod sono uocis, id est uerbo extrinseco manifestatur. et diuina sapientia, quam de corde suo Pater eructauit, in se inuisibilis, per creaturas et in creaturis agnoscitur. ex quo nimirum colligitur, quam 72  Anselm of Canterbury, “Proslogion,” in S.  Anselmi cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1946), I,4 (p. 103). 73  Valente, “Verbum Mentis—Vox Clamantis: The Notion of the Mental Word in TwelfthCentury Theology,” 390.

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profunda in sacris litteris requirenda sit intelligentia, ubi per uocem ad intellectum, per intellectum ad rem, per rem ad rationem, per rationem peruenitur ad ueritatem. You must know that in divine discourse not only words but even things signify, in a way that is not usually found in other texts. A philosopher knows only the meaning of spoken words, but the meaning of things is much more valuable than that of words, because the latter is established by custom, the former by nature; the latter is the voice of humans, the former the voice of God to humans; the latter perishes after it is spoken, the former remains as created. The voice is a weak sign of the senses, whereas the thing is a likeness of divine reason. What the sound of the mouth, which simultaneously begins and ceases to exist, is to the reason of the mind, the whole length of time is to eternity. The reason of the mind is an interior word, which is manifested outside by means of the sound of the voice, namely the word. And the divine wisdom, which the Father brought forth from his heart, is in itself invisible but recognised through creatures and in creatures. From which it should be clear what deep insight should be searched for in sacred Scripture, where one moves from voice to intellect, from intellect to thing, from thing to reason, from reason to truth.74

The last sentence, with its precept to go from voice to intellect, from intellect to thing, from thing to reason, from reason to truth, is a mix of two philosophical models, which are taken out of their context and applied to biblical interpretation. Vox, intellectus, and res refer to Boethius’ commentary on Aristotle.75 For the second part of the line, from res through ratio to veritas, the Augustinian framework is the norm. According to Luisa Valente: Hugh transfers to Scriptural exegesis the philosophical terminology which occurs in Boethius in a logico-semantic and in a psychological-cognitive context […] But Hugh transforms the Boethian terminology in order to insert it into the exegetical framework, a framework which is based on

74  Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi (Washington: The Catholic university press, 1939), V,3 (p. 96). 75  Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boetii commentarii in librum Aristotelis Peri Ermeneias, ̄ I,1 (p. 20). “Res enim ab intellectu concipitur, vox vero conceptiones animi intellectusque significat, ipsi vero intellectus et concipiunt subiectas res et significantur a vocibus.”/“The thing is perceived by the intellect, the spoken word signifies the concepts of the mind and the intellect. Thoughts themselves both perceive objects and are signified by spoken words.”

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Augustine’s idea that in the sacred Scriptures not only do words signify but also the things signified by the words.76

Thus, Hugh too is finding ways to integrate the visual with the verbal model of cognition, this time in order to apply it to exegesis. Again, we see that the verbal model becomes dominant. Another context in which language frees itself from its association with the visual is logic. Although Abelard, for instance, adheres to the notion that words are symbols of intellections formed on the basis of images in the mind, he also clears the space for language to function independently and according to its own laws. Words receive a greater potential to structure the intellections rather than merely signifying them. Moreover, he differentiates between real words working in the mind and metaphorical inner words, making it clear that verbum is only metonymically used to denote a concept of the mind.77 In conclusion, we can say with Brian Stock that “[l]anguage, as invented, utilized in discourse, and internalized as thought, was thereby made the official mediator between reality and mental experience.”78 I now turn to Hildegard’s own development of a theory of words, which took place somewhere between the writing of her first and last book of visions. Hildegard’s Turn to Language Scivias contains not much reflection on words. As in the case of terms for cognition, the terminology changes in the later works. The only theoretical reflection in the book occurs, predictably, in the context of trinitarian theology. In a long list of analogies for the Trinity, Hildegard talks about “the three causes of the word,” sonus, virtus, and flatus (sound, power, 76  Valente, “Verbum Mentis—Vox Clamantis: The Notion of the Mental Word in TwelfthCentury Theology,” 393. 77  Peter Abelard, Theologia Christiana (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011), 266 (p. 80). “Ne mireris si, ut dixerim, ipse quoque conceptus mentis ‘verbum’ dicatur, translato de effectu ad causam uocabulo, cum e conuerso de causa ad effectum factis plerisque utamur translationibus.”/“Do not wonder if, as I said, the mental concept goes by the name of ‘word’ as well. This is a figural translation from effect to cause, just as we use many figurative expressions from cause to effect.” 78  Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton university press, 1983), 385.

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and breath, respectively). The word has a sound so that it can be heard, the power of enabling understanding, and breath to carry the sound and its understanding. The sound corresponds to the Father, who brings forth everything, the power to the Son, and the breath to the Holy Spirit. The three causes of the word must work together for communication to work, just as the Trinity performs their work unanimously.79 Although the verbal metaphor often occurs in discussions about the Trinity, this is an innovative way of expressing it. As we have seen, when Augustine explains the generation of Christ by analogy, he has recourse to an inner word that is externalised as a spoken word. Further, the word is mostly seen as a combination of two elements: sound and meaning (vox and verbum), between which there is a clear hierarchy. Hildegard, however, has three elements: sound, meaning, and the breath that carries the sound. This triad contains no inner word, only the spoken word and the understanding it carries to the receiver. Moreover, these elements are equal to each other, with sonus as the Father.80 In Liber divinorum operum, Hildegard makes more use of the conceptual pair vox and verbum. The pair has a typological function. The Old Law is like the voice that becomes a meaningful word in the New Law; the prophets produce a sound that is only understood when their prophecies are fulfilled. As Hildegard says in her exegesis of Genesis 1: Hoc considerandum sic est: Vox primum sonat et uim uerbi in se habet, ita ut quecumque annuntiat scienter intelligantur. […] Sed et uox aliquantum aliena est nec intelligibilis, uerbum autem notum et intelligibile est […]. The voice sounds first and has the force of the word in it, so that whatever it makes known can be consciously understood. […] But the voice is, to a certain degree, strange and untintelligible, whereas the word is known and intelligible […].81

This corresponds to the distinction between voice and word that Augustine develops in his Sermon 288, a sermon about John the Baptist calling himself “vox clamantis in deserto” (“the voice calling out in the desert”). The  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, II,2,7.  In the context of language theory, flatus could remind of Roscelin of Compiègne’s assessment of universals as just “flatus vocis,” and the stereotypical characterisations of the so-called vocalists, but it seems more likely that the trinitarian analogy and biblical language is the only thing at play here. 81  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, II,1,21. 79 80

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voice is empty without the word, its signification, just as John’s calling is fulfilled in Christ. The word can do without the voice, but the voice is nothing but sound without the word. Both Augustine and Hildegard connect the vox-verbum binary to cognition and speech, but in markedly different ways. Augustine equates the voice with speech and the word with thought. The word is not bound to language, as the voice is. Rather, it is “a conception of the heart that exists in the memory and lives in the intellect, ready to be manifested by the voice in the language that is most proper for the public.”82 For the one who speaks, the word comes first, conceived in thought and ready to be manifested through the voice. For the one who hears, however, the voice comes first, and later follows understanding of the thought that is communicated through it.83 For Augustine, thought is most important and therefore symbolised by the word. The spoken word that thought utters, in its turn, is symbolised by the voice. Hildegard, on the contrary, associates the voice with thinking and not with speech, because for her words are linked to doing. In the context of a discussion about prophecy, for instance, she says that rationality speaks with sound, and sound is like thought, and the word is like a deed.84 So strong is the link between word and act that thought is relegated to the position of instrument. The fact that Hildegard takes up the pair vox and verbum does not mean that she has abandoned the triadic nature of the word. Her commentary on the prologue of John in Chap. 4 of Liber divinorum operum takes up this idea again. She begins the commentary by stating that God is the Ratio “that does not resound through anything else, but from which

82  Valente, “Verbum Mentis—Vox Clamantis: The Notion of the Mental Word in TwelfthCentury Theology,” 400. 83  Augustine, Sermones ad populum, Patrologia Latina 38 (Paris, 1850), Sermo 288, 1306. “Praecessit ergo uerbum uocem meam, et in me prius est uerbum, posterior uox: ad te autem, ut intelligas, prior uenit uox auri tuae, ut uerbum insinuetur menti tuae. nosse enim non posses quod in me fuerat ante uocem, nisi in te fuerit post uocem. ergo si uox ioannes, uerbum christus: ante ioannem christus, sed apud deum; post ioannem christus, sed apud nos”/“My word precedes my voice, and my word is first in me, then my voice. But to you, so that you would understand, the voice reaches your ear first and pushes the word into your mind. You cannot know what was in me before the voice, unless it will be in you after the voice. Because when John is the voice, Christ is the word: before John there was Christ, but in, after John there will be Christ, but in us.” 84  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, II,3,2. “Sonus” seems to be a synonym of “vox” for Hildegard.

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all rationality arises.”85 Then follows the statement that I quoted in the beginning of this section, that it is the nature of human rationality to comprehend everything through names and numbers. There are some limitations to this knowledge: God “cannot be perfectly pronounced” by anyone, and only God himself can count the number of angels. The exegesis then turns to “Et verbum erat apud Deum. Et Deus erat verbum” (“And the Word was with God, and the Word was God”). Instead of focusing on the relation of the Son to the Father, Hildegard talks about the indivisibility of rationality and word, which always go together. Such is the importance of this fact that it deserves to be repeated four times in one sentence: Et uerbum erat apud Deum, sicut uerbum in racionalitate est, quoniam racionalitas uerbum in se habet et in racionalitate est uerbum; et hec a se diuisa non sunt. And the word was with God, just as the word is in rationality, because rationality has the word in it and in rationality is the word; and these are not separate.86

The word is creation, which was predestined in God before time, just as people “dictate a word hidden in their heart before emitting it.”87 This is one of the few instances where Hildegard uses the idea of an inner word, which is only employed by her in relation to creation.88 She continues: “And why is it called a word? Because with a resounding voice it awakened all the creatures and called them to Him.”89 When the word of God 85  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,105. “My clarity has overshadowed the prophets as well, who have foretold the future through sacred inspiration, just as everything that God wanted to make were shadows in God before they were made. But rationality speaks with sound, and sound is like thought, and word like the deed.” 86  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,105. 87  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,105. 88  Although we do find the pair interior-exterior word reflected in this statement, it is not linked to the contrast between vox and verbum, not even when John the Baptist is mentioned. Although John was Augustine’s prime example of the voice that precedes the Word, Hildegard does not compare him to a word, but to the stomach. I assume that John is likened to a stomach because it is said in Matthew 3:4 that his food were locusts and wild honey. Speaking against this assumption is that his choice of food made John the ideal of the ascetic, whereas Hildegard focuses on the fact that the stomach contains all sorts of nutritious foods just as the world contains all kinds of useful creatures. Then again, Hildegard was not a huge fan of strict ascetism, nor of adhering to traditional interpretations. 89  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,105.

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resounded, it appeared in each creature and its sound was the life of each creature. Therefore, the rationality of humans operates with the same word, and brings forth its works with the same sound. Hildegard’s conception of words as primarily the doers of deeds and thoughts as their preparation finds its most fitting analogy in creation. Later in the exegesis, we reach the phrase “his qui credunt in nomine eius” (“those who believed in his name”). Here, we find one of the most interesting aspects of Hildegard’s theory of language, but also the most obscure. The issue that the exegesis deals with is this: if we can only know through names, but God cannot be captured by names, how then can we know anything beyond what we sense? Hildegard offers an answer by drawing an analogy between the triune God, a tripartite concept of a thing, and a tripartite concept of a name. First, she says that there are three forces in the name of God: it has no beginning, it is the origin of all that is created, and it is the life through which all life breathes. Second, she says that every creature with a name has three forces according to these three trinitarian forces. Creatures without a name do not have these forces, because “an arid and rotten creature has no name, because it is not living.”90 Third, Hildegard describes the analogy between the creature and its name: Nomini autem uitalis creature tres uires assunt, quarum altera uidetur et  altera scitur, sed tercia non uidetur. Corpus enim uitalis rei uidetur et quod gignit scitur, sed unde uitalis sit nec cognoscitur nec uidetur. There are three forces in the name of a living creature, of which one is seen, one is known, but the third is not seen. For the body of a living thing is seen and what it yields is known, but why it is living is not known and not seen.91

Thus, we again find a trinitarian concept of the word that at first sight looks similar to that of Scivias. However, I think that the two are quite different: in Scivias, the subject was the spoken word, verbum, which establishes communication, while here it is the name, nomen, which fuels cognition. To get a clue of how to interpret this obscure passage, let us read further. After her cryptic words, Hildegard proceeds to speak about how faith  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,105.  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,105.

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spreads the word of God through the means of miraculous things. These miraculous things can be seen and not seen at the same time, and they can be known but also not: “In such a way, faith strongly supports and carries magnificently the name of God with miraculous things, which can be seen and cannot be seen, and which can be known and cannot be known.”92 She then compares this to a human, whose body and deeds can be seen, but in whom there is so much more that cannot be seen nor understood. She asks: If there is already such an obscurity in humans, however could the one who created them be clear to us? The conclusion is that no human on earth can know the creator the way he is. This provides us with the context in which we should situate the tripartite name of a creature. Biblical allegoresis starts with the Pauline injunction to search for what is invisible through what is visible. Hildegard phrases this as follows: Deus qui omnia in sua uoluntate condidit, ea ad cognitionem et honorem nominis sui creauit, non solum autem ea quae uisibilia et temporalia sunt in ipsis ostendens, sed etiam illa quae inuisibilia et aeterna sunt in eis manifestans. God, who has established everything according to his will, has created everything for the purpose of the knowledge and honour of his name, manifesting in creation not only what is visible and temporal but also what is invisible and eternal.93

The quest of trying to know and speak about the divine is the task of allegorical exegesis, which must find out not only what a word in the Bible refers to but also what the thing named by the word refers to. Behind everything that is visible, there lies an invisible mystery that cannot be seen but that can still be known. I propose to analyse the two lines cited above, about the tripartite force of the name and its analogy to the body of a creature, in this exegetical vein. Hildegard says that the body of a creature consists of three forces. The body first has a material component, which is visible. Secondly, there is what the creature yields, “quod gignit.” This component is not visible but can be known. I believe this knowledge concerns the nature and the properties of the thing, and its relations to other things. We might relate this to the following extract from one of the letters:  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,105.  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I,3,1.

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Omnes creature que uidentur et que non uidentur, spiritali uita non carent, et quas homo non cognoscit, intellectus eius querit donec cognoscat. Nam de uiriditate flores, de floribus fructus sunt pomorum. Nubes etiam cursum habent. Luna quoque et stelle cum igne flagrant, ligna per uiriditatem flores educunt, aqua tenuitatem et uentum inundando et riuulos educendo habet. Terra etiam humiditatem cum sudore habet. Nam omnes creature habent quod uidetur et quod non uidetur. Quod uidetur debile est, et quod non uidetur forte ac uitale est. Hoc intellectus hominis querit ut cognoscat, quoniam illud non uidet. All the creatures that are seen and the ones which are not seen do not lack the spiritual life, and those that humans do not recognise are sought out by the human intellect until it recognises them. For from greenness come flowers, and from flowers come the fruits of fruit-trees. For clouds have their course. The moon and the stars, as well, burn with fire, branches grow flowers from greenness, water in its thin form overflows the wind and brings forth streams. For the earth sweats when it is humid. For all creatures have a part that is seen and a part that is not seen. What is seen is weak, and what is not seen is strong and living. This the human intellect looks for so that it would know it, because it does not see it.94

The text passage describes two aspects of things: the visible and the invisible. The latter seems to describe the nature of things and their functioning. This is knowledge that humans can acquire by observing nature: how plants grow, how winds move, how moon and stars run their course, and how water flows in a cyclical movement from rain to river and back again. In the text from Liber divinorum operum under analysis, Hildegard adds a third aspect, namely that which is invisible and cannot be known. If we would read this in the context of Augustinian sign theory and exegetical theory, this would be what the thing refers to in its function as a sign pointing to the divine, what Augustine calls signum translatum.95 Hildegard associates this hidden aspect with the Holy Spirit, and with the source of vitality and viriditas. No doubt she is referring to the biblical passage that says, “Spiritus ubi vult spirat et vocem eius audis sed non scis unde veniat et quo vadat sic est omnis qui natus est ex Spiritu [emphasis added]” (“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but

 Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars prima: I–XC, 31R (p. 87).  Armand Strubel, “‘Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis,’” Poétique, no. 23 (1975): 342–57. 94 95

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you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit”).96 Next, the text indicates that the structure of the name is analogous to that of the thing. Firstly, in the name there is that which is seen, presumably its sound or its written form. Secondly, there is that which is known: the meaning of the word. Thirdly, there is that which cannot be seen. I suggest that this is the understanding of the third force of the thing, namely that to which the thing refers other than itself. How can this knowledge be in the name? Notice that Hildegard says about the third force of the thing that it “cannot be known nor seen,” but about the third force of the name only that it “cannot be seen.” Because we can only know things through names, the invisible aspect to which a visible thing refers cannot be known through the thing itself, but only through the mediation of the name. By discussing the creature and its name as two analogous structures, Hildegard manages to separate words and things while also maintaining a relation between them. The specific relations between the three parts of word and thing are not so clear, however. Judging from the direct and exclusive link Hildegard draws elsewhere between perception, naming, and understanding, it seems that words have not only a referential but also an instrumental function. The referential relation is that between the audible or visible word and the visible thing. The instrumental relation is that by which the word produces knowledge about the thing. So, on the one hand, we find the notion that words do not provide direct access to understanding things. The two are separated, and it is clear that the thing itself as a divine symbol “nec cognoscitur nec videtur” (“is not known nor seen”); knowledge is only accessible through thinking in words. This is similar to the idea that a name does not refer directly to the thing, but to the intellectus. To quote Abelard: “To interpret a word is not to assign an object to it, but to open up understanding.”97 We can also think of Hugh of Saint Victor’s cognitive quest “per uocem ad intellectum, per intellectum ad rem, per rem ad rationem, per rationem […] ad ueritatem” (“from voice to intellect, from intellect to thing, from thing to reason, from reason to truth”).98 For Hildegard, too, it seems that to  John 3,8.  Peter Abelard, Glossae super Peri hermeneias, CCCM 206 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), Pooemium, 21. 98  Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi, V,3 (p. 96). 96 97

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think with names is not to refer to a thing, and also not to a specific meaning connected directly to the thing, but to open up a thought process that discerns properties, natures, movements, phenomena, and ultimately maybe the divine truth behind these. On the other hand, even as words and things are separated from each other, they mirror each other’s structure. It seems as if the structural analogy between them is an important part of what allows words to be used as cognitive tools. In order to look for clarification, let us now turn to what Hildegard says about processing thoughts.

Exegetical Cognition Hildegard bases her model for describing the thought process on monastic exegesis and reading, just as she did for her theory of naming. She conceptualises thinking in general as exegetical reading. Reading, in its turn, is conceptualised as eating and digesting, after the concept of monastic reading as a process of rumination. Both of these metaphors together describe the process of thinking. Speaking about the soul, Hildegard says that it “pours thoughts into the heart and brings them together in the breast, which then go to the head and to all the other body parts.”99 Especially to the eyes, “because they are the windows to the soul, by which it recognises creatures, since it is full of rationality and discerns their forces in a single word.”100 The eyes perceive and recognise a creature, and then discern the characteristics or vires of the thing by means of the word associated with it. Next, the thoughts decide on a course of action. In Chap. 4 of Liber divinorum operum, the metaphors of thinking and remembering as both eating and writing are introduced in a very dense paragraph full of comparisons. First, it is said that the soul judges the usefulness of things as if it were writing: “In such a way the soul discerns in the human heart every thought about useful or useless matters, by contemplating it and as if writing it down, and it decides how the rational person must act in each situation.”101 Then, chewing, thinking, and 99  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,103. “Et quoniam a Deo missa est, in corde cogitationes fundat et in pectore congregat, que deinde in caput et in omnia membra hominis transeunt.” 100  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,103. 101  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,61.

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digesting (in that order) are compared to the air that infuses fruit with “virentes vires” (“life-giving forces”) in order to preserve the good things that are in the world for the health of humans.102 Later in the text, in the analogy of John the Baptist to the stomach, these separate strands come together. Deus autem, qui mirabilis existit, ad uentrem hominis miracula, que in Iohanne fecit, conformat. Venter enim uires creaturarum, quas recipit et emittit, postulat, ut de suco earum, sicut Deus constituit, pascatur. Sed tamen in omnibus creaturis, scilicet in animalibus, in reptilibus, in uolatilibus et in piscibus, in herbis et in pomiferis quedam occulta misteria Dei latent, que nec homo nec alia ulla creatura scit aut sentit, nisi quantum eis a Deo datum est. But God, who is full of wonders, modeled the miracles which he performed by John on the human stomach. For the stomach asks for the forces of creatures, which it takes up and releases again, so that it can be fed by their juices, as God has established. But still in every creature, namely in the animals, in the reptiles, in the birds and in the fish, in the herbs and the fruit trees, some secret mysteries of God lie hidden, which neither humans nor any other creature knows or feels, except as far as God allows them.103

The stomach takes up the vires that sweet air infused into the fruit. The second sentence does not seem to fit the first: “sed tamen” points to an opposition, followed by the statement that all creatures hide some divine mysteries that no one can know. Building on what we already saw, we know that for Hildegard every interaction between human and creature or thing is an act of knowing. Eating, chewing, and digesting include a judgement about the essence of things, and at the same time they are metaphors for the act of knowing itself. But here the opposition occurs (“Sed tamen”): this first act of knowing is not everything; mysteries are hidden in the things that we eat which tell us more than their practical use. However, those things can only be known if granted by God. The divine cannot be known other than “by signification” through these things: “But this is shown by signification, so that through it He who cannot be seen visibly with visible eyes would become known in faith.”104

 Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,62.  Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,105. 104  Hildegard of Bingen, I,2,3. 102 103

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We can connect this to the analogous forces of a thing and a name that I described in the previous section. The kind of knowledge that Hildegard describes when she talks about cognition discovers the vires of things and their relations to each other. It corresponds to the second force of a thing, namely its characteristics and dynamic relations, and to the second force of a word, which is the knowledge that the intellect has of these things. The aim of this knowledge is to live a good and moral life in harmony with other creatures. But there is another kind of knowledge, granted only in part, which uses the knowledge of the nature of things and the universe to discover the analogies between them. In this way, knowledge about the divine nature of humans and about the divine itself becomes partially possible. Thus, we have the “three forces of a creature” which are present in a name: that which can be seen and perceived, that which can be known though not seen, and that which cannot be seen nor comprehended. That which can be seen is the creature in its material and visible form as our senses encounter it. That which can be known though not seen is its nature and place in the world. That which cannot be known nor seen is what it can tell us about the divine: this cannot be known except indirectly. Let us return to the paragraph that was the subject of the discussion and which continues by comparing the process of meditating on one’s deeds and committing their true nature to memory: Eodem modo anima omnia opera hominis ruminat et memorie commendat, ita ut nullum illorum indiscussum relinquat; uelut esca uentri per guttur inmittitur, et sicut esca dentibus conteritur, sic anima cum spiramine suo opera hominis discernendo scribit; et hanc scripturam per cogitationes colligit, ut homo opera sua qualia sint cognoscat, que ipse uelut aliquas formas rerum in cogitationibus suis, in quibus formantur, iugiter inspiciat. In this way, the soul chews over all the actions of a person and entrusts them to the memory, so that none of them would remain unexamined. Just as food is sent to the stomach through the throat, and as food is broken down by the teeth, so the soul with its breath writes down the actions of a person by discerning them. And it assembles this writing through the thoughts, so that people would recognise their actions for what they are, which they themselves see as the forms of things, constantly considering them in their thoughts, in which they are formed.105

105

 Hildegard of Bingen, I,4,62.

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The way in which the soul considers its works and entrusts them to the memory is likened to the action of the teeth in chewing food until it is ready to be stored in the stomach. At the same time, the metaphor of writing is employed as self-evident and in no need of explication. The soul acknowledging and storing the memory of deeds is an act of writing, a very common metaphor, which is used by Hildegard a few other times.106 For instance, she mentions that “the thoughts are like a wax tablet on which the soul writes,” because it polishes the works that it considers and prepares future works as if by writing.107 That which is written is subsequently assembled by the thoughts. Compare this to Hugh of Saint Victor’s Didascalion on the subject of ‘memoria,’ where the primary task of memory is also “colligere”: “Just as the brain examines and finds by dividing, so the memory guards by assembling. It is right that what what we divide by learning, we assemble by commending it to the memory.”108 “Colligere” is defined by Hugh as making a short summary of something that was written or said, a preface.109 Thus, if memorising is writing, then the genre is a summary or a preface that captures the essence and the full force of what is memorised. This is similar in Hildegard’s theory: after having collected the writing in memory, people are able to read their acts “as they are,” which means thoughts are transformed by the whole process of ruminare and colligere into a summarising text which provides the reader with insight into their true nature. The mind goes from reading its deeds to writing a commentary, to, as it were, reading its own summary. The visionary adds that it is because of this process that people can consider their own actions, seeing them “as they are,” namely as “the forms of things.” This is interesting, because it brings us back to the process of abstraction in cognition: 106  Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 32–37. 107  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4,63. “Etiam anima seruicium cogitationum est, et cogitationes sicut pugillaris in quo scribitur anime sunt; quoniam ipsa omnia opera hominis cum illis limat et quasi scribendo ad id ad quod per corpus cogitur preparat.”/“For the soul serves the thoughts, and the thoughts are like a wax tablet on which the soul writes, because she polishes all the works of a person with them and prepares them as if by writing for that to which it is forced by the body.” 108  Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi, III,11 (p. 60). 109  Hugh of Saint Victor, III,11 (p. 60). “For each treatise has some sort of beginning, on which depends the truth of everything and the force of meaning, and to this beginning everything in the text refers. To look for and think of something like this is to assemble in the mind.”

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“formae rerum (qualia sunt)” (“the forms of things (as they are)”) are the essences of things that are abstracted by the intellect. To sum up, two frameworks are used, corresponding to two objects of knowledge: the assessment of deeds is captured within a theory of reading and memorising, whereas the knowledge of things is acquired by discerning the properties of things and abstracting their formae. Saying that assessing deeds (as if one were reading and writing) “is like” inspecting the forms of things as they are formed by the thoughts is to equate the two frameworks.

From Hermeneutics to Epistemology It remains difficult to determine how well acquainted Hildegard was with the theories on cognition and language of her time and therefore to decide where she is reacting against a certain idea and to what extent her theory corresponds to other texts. The fact that Hildegard seems to deliberately obscure references to other theories complicates the problem. Terms or clusters of terms that would refer to other theories are mostly absent. For example, Hildegard does not use Augustine’s famous trinitarian triad of memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas to refer to the workings of the mind, nor does she take up any of his other triads, although she has plenty of her own. As I have argued elsewhere, Hildegard does not just take up traditional ideas but also changes the framework in which they are found, and she seems to be reacting against some general tendencies in the early scholastic period.110 Nonetheless, I identify a transformation of allegorical hermeneutics to allegorical epistemology in Hildegard’s books of visions that aligns well with some of the main tendencies in prescholastic philosophy. Almost every idea encountered in this chapter is a staple of traditional allegorical hermeneutics, but if you look at the connections between the ideas and the frames in which they are situated, the whole picture appears a lot less traditional. Most importantly, these familiar hermeneutic ideas do not occur in their familiar, hermeneutic, context. In every single case, the issue is not how to handle words in texts, but how to handle words in thinking. Thus, we find in Hildegard’s books something similar to the shift of language questions from the domain of biblical exegesis to that of cognition 110  See Dinah Wouters, “‘Nisi per Nomina’. Language as the Medium of Thought in Hildegard of Bingen’s Thinking,” Revue d’histoire Ecclésiastique 113, no. 1–2 (2018): 66–93.

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and general epistemology during the period of early scholasticism. Questions that were previously applied only to biblical language (e.g., how can the text say one thing and mean something else?) are now transferred to language in general and philosophical language in particular (e.g., how can we use language to refer to two levels of being at the same time?). Similarly, Hildegard discusses the polysemy of words not as a characteristic of the biblical text to which one applies allegorical exegesis, but as a characteristic of language that allows people to think about the equally polysemous reality of life. At the same time, it is also clear that the hermeneutical structures deeply influence how Hildegard thinks about language and cognition. First of all, Hildegard does not compartmentalise the different operations of thinking. Perception and cognition are only nominally distinguished from each other; they both flow into each other, driven by rationality. The senses are active agents, and they are as much part of thought and rationality as the act of naming, assessing, and deciding. In line with this, the different mental faculties do not build a hierarchy. Thinking is a circular process: when someone has understood a particular state of affairs, this understanding must lead to a decision and an action, which again becomes the object of perception. This stands in stark contrast to the way philosophers used the distinctions between sensus, ratio, and intellectus to demarcate disciplines and situate them in a hierarchy where the goal is the ultimate abstract knowledge. In Hildegard’s model, on the contrary, cognition does not aspire to knowledge of the divine. This knowledge, aside from only being indirectly accessible, is no part of the normal process of cognition, which is directed at speaking and acting. Hildegard strongly rejects the possibility of transcendence for the human mind while in this life. As she warns in a letter dated to the last decade of her life, when she wrote Liber divinorum operum: “Nulla enim rationalis in ulla eum ascensione comprehendere ualet” (“No rational soul is able to comprehend him in any kind of ascent”).111 And again in Liber vite meritorum: “Sed homo infra globum istum uiuit, ac eius ambitu circumdatur. Vnde homo in comprehensione sua progredi ultra non poterit” (“But people live under the earth’s sphere and are surrounded by its ambit. Therefore, people cannot progress beyond it in their comprehension”).112 This reads as a reaction 111  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), 281 (p. 35). 112  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, CCCM 90 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), I,34.

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against the kind of thinking represented by Boethius’ claim about intelligentia in De Consolatione that it is able to progress beyond the ambit of the cosmos and contemplate the simple forms in pure thought.113 Hildegard’s model of cognition, in contrast, models itself on the monastic virtues of humility and charity that should also be the guiding principles when doing exegesis: the reader can only hope for partial insight, with the help of God, and must apply all acquired knowledge to living a good life. Second, the influence of hermeneutics can account for the astonishing status of words in cognition. Speaking is the most important among the senses, because naming things is an act of knowing, or rather the act of knowing. Mental images do not even appear in this schema: the road from perception to cognition runs only through words. Names reveal the vires, the powers, movements, relations, and characteristics of natural things, leading to an intellection of the essential nature of the thing. This primacy of words is adopted in analogy with a textual model, where, naturally, only words give access to knowledge. What happens here, namely the adoption of an exegetical principle into general epistemology, is similar to the cases of Anselm of Canterbury and Hugh of Saint Victor, who are among the first to give spoken words a more prominent place in cognition, next to inner words. They do so while working with frameworks in which words had always played a prominent role: trinitarian theology and exegesis. Thus, words become more important in philosophy because the old frameworks in which they were important are called upon to support the new ones. Third, Hildegard’s theory of the deeper meaning of reality and how to perceive it mixes principles from biblical allegoresis with elements taken from theories of cognition. For instance, there are two different processes for discerning the invisible behind the visible: one is for assessing human deeds and the other for exploring the deep structure of reality. These correspond to the difference between moral and strictly allegorical exegesis. I have mentioned that there is a difference between two kinds of cognitive movements: the moral assessment of human actions, on the one hand, and the search for the significance of creatures, on the other. These two kinds of cognition are conceptualised within different frameworks, although they are equated by virtue of the fact that, in both, we are looking for an essence, an essential form.

 Boethius, Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii Philosophiae consolatio, V,4.

113

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There is also a difference between the early work, Scivias, and the later work, Liber divinorum operum. In Scivias, only human actions are mentioned as the object of cognition. The movement from observing deeds to the moral assessment of deeds is captured by the simple and twofold distinction between visibilia and invisibilia. It is only in the later works that the object is introduced as a cognitive object. As a result, it seems, the two-step process from visible to invisible is transformed into a three-step process. The first step is the visible form of something, identified through its name. The second step is its (invisible) natural character, corresponding to the primary meaning of the name. The third step is the (invisible) reference of this meaning to a secondary meaning—the allegorical meaning. This theoretical difference corresponds to the formal difference that I have sketched in the previous chapter between each book’s representations of the allegorical cosmos. When Hildegard equates the threefold structure of the creature to the threefold structure of its name, she binds together two frameworks that describe this three-tiered structure, one that describes reality and another that describes texts. The first framework is the neoplatonic division of reality corresponding to the different ways in which the mind perceives reality. It is summed up by Hugh of Saint Victor in the following sentences from his commentary on pseudo-Dionysius’ work on the celestial hierarchies: Per uisibiles enim uisibilium formas peruenitur ad inuisibiles uisibilium causas, et per inuisibiles uisibilium causas ascenditur ad inuisibiles substantias et earum cognoscendas naturas. Through the visible forms of visible things, one reaches the invisible causes of visible things, and through the invisible causes of visible things, one ascends to the invisible substances and their perceptible natures.114

For Hugh, these different kinds of knowing correspond to the disciplines of, respectively, mathematics, physics, and theology. In Hildegard’s model, however, there is no need for a specialised language. She binds together these three levels with the powers of the individual word, which indicates that it is the power of language in general to give access to the invisible 114   Hugh of Saint Victor, Super Hierarchiam Dionysii (Commentarius in Dionysii Hierarchiam Caelestem), CCCM 178 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), I, Dionysii prologus (p. 404).

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causes of visible things and the invisible natures of invisible things. Also, in other theories, these three levels correspond to different sciences because they correspond to the different faculties of the mind: senses, reason, and intelligence. But Hildegard transfers these levels from the structure of the mind to the tool with which the mind works, namely language. Second, this philosophical model of the divisions of reality and the corresponding divisions of the mind is paired with an exegetical framework, namely the theory that Friedrich Ohly called “Dingbedeutung” and Hennig Brinkmann the “Zweite Sprache.”115 Medieval exegetes hold that words for things that occur in biblical texts do not only have a primary reference, namely to the thing itself, but also a secondary reference, which is made possible because things themselves, outside of the text, signify too. In exegesis, the method of finding the signification of a thing works by identifying the properties or qualities of a thing. These properties are summarised in encyclopaedias and allegorical dictionaries. In other words, this is the practical application of the neoplatonic epistemological model. Brinkmann calls the two levels to which the visible, material, level gives access the natural and the religious. The natural level, however, is not to be viewed in opposition to the religious, because it is itself embedded in a spiritual cosmos. Everything that is created has a natural place within creation. The knowledge of these natural meanings is not sought for its own sake, however, but because they help people to live a good and meaningful life on earth and after death.116 The other level, the religious, is the spiritual meaning of the thing. The thing functions as a sign by referring to something outside itself, which Hildegard calls signification. With the help of the grace of God, this signification can be discovered on the basis of the properties of a thing, the natural qualities of the first level, which Hildegard calls their vires. In sum, Hildegard has transferred the analogy between words and things, which forms the basis of a theory of textual interpretation, to her account of cognition.

115  Friedrich Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalters,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 58 (1958): 1–23; Hennig Brinkmann, “Die ‘zweite Sprache’ und die Dichtung des Mittelalters,” in Methoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters, ed. Rudolf Hoffmann and Albert Zimmermann, 1970, 155–71; Hennig Brinkmann, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980). 116  Brinkmann, “Die ‘zweite Sprache’ und die Dichtung des Mittelalters,” 159.

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Allegorical Creation from Exegetical Method Lastly, it is my claim that this cognitive theory provides a theoretical basis for the form of the allegorical visions. The structure of one-to-one correspondences between allegory and allegoresis that Hildegard creates appears to merge the procedures of two exegetical methods: that of glossing and that of semantic transfer through a thing’s properties. I shall argue that this particular combination emerges because the visions illustrate a cognitive process, not a hermeneutic one, which changes the way that glossing and the transfer of meaning function. Glossing and Properties I have characterised the form of allegory and allegoresis in the books of visions as a continuous structure of one-to-one correspondences between both. The form of this correspondence, being a one-to-one relationship, is that of a gloss held to the standard of a continuous commentary. I have discussed this technique of glossing in the chapter on the homilies. The nature of the correspondence, however, also plays a role in determining the form and conforms to another exegetical method: that of the semantic transfer through properties. The principle is that you can learn the deeper meaning of a word by analysing the properties, that is: the characteristics, of the thing to which the word refers. These properties are shared between things, and the links are essential and significant. This is the medieval version of the idea repeated in, for instance, Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors we live by: metaphors are not purely linguistic but grounded in our conceptual system and our experience of reality.117 It also corresponds to a neoplatonic view of reality in which visible forms are related to invisible truths via the mediation of their invisible character. In this view, knowledge of the world does not simply give access to more knowledge of the world, but to that kind of knowledge that is not of this world. However, my analysis has shown that Hildegard does not describe the connection as one between things and concepts in the mind, but as a direct link between things and words, although the whole process of signification is still situated in the mind. Her model, I suggested, is the hermeneutical one of the exegesis of texts in which this principle of transfer via properties is applied in a practical way. 117  George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1980).

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This model was put into practice by a genre of texts that served as handbooks for the writing of allegorical exegesis, namely the allegorical encyclopaedias and dictionaries.118 These are manuals that help with the work of exegesis by giving the spiritual meanings of things on the basis of their natural characteristics or properties. Let us look at an example from Raban Maur’s encyclopedia De Universo. Valleys are defined as “humilia loca quasi uulsa” (“low places, as if torn out of the landscape”).119 The most important property of a valley is thus that it is low, metaphorically expressed as “humble.” Therefore, a valley signifies humble people. The phrase from the Song of Songs “lilium convallium Gloria,” then, signifies the glory of the humble. Christel Meier has noted how the way in which Hildegard’s visions describe a loose arrangement of impressions focuses the attention on the characteristics of things and their function as mediators of meaning: The unusually numerous descriptions of the nature of the objects in the visions, such as colour, form, consistency and material, already point in this direction. Even more remarkable is a development towards the late work Liber divinorum operum, whose tenth vision marks a kind of end point. Whereas in the Scivias it was mainly human figures and things, albeit in sometimes peculiar combinations, that carried meaning, here lines and colours and their changes suffice to signify God (in his attributes), historical time and eternity. The qualities have thus become partly independent.120

118  I use the term ‘allegorical encyclopaedia’ in contrast to the alphabetically ordered ‘allegorical dictionary,’ and the term ‘allegorical handbooks’ for both. I do not further distinguish between allegorical and non-allegorical encyclopaedias, following Heinz Meyer, who has pointed out that there is no clear distinction in the Middle Ages between encyclopaedias which are only concerned with the natural world and those that go beyond that. Heinz Meyer, “Zum Verhältnis von Enzyklopädik und Allegorese im Mittelalter,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 24 (1990): 290–313. 119  Raban Maur, De Rerum Naturis (Migne, 1851), VIII,3. 120  Christel Meier, “Zwei Modelle von Allegorie im 12. Jahrhundert: Das allegorische Verfahren Hildegards von Bingen und Alans von Lille,” in Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 79. “Schon die ungewöhnlich zahlreichen Bezeichnungen zur Beschaffenheit der Visionsgegenstände wie Farben-, Form-, Konsistenz-, Oberflächenbeschreibung weisen in diese Richtung. Bemerkenswerter noch ist eine Entwicklung zum Spätwerk Liber divinorum operum hin, dessen zehnte Vision eine Art Endpunkt markiert. Hatten im Scivias überwiegend Menschengestalten und Dinge, wenngleich in zum Teil eigenartiger Zusammenstellung, die Bedeutungsgehalte in sich aufgenommen, reichen hier Linien und Farben sowie deren Änderungen aus, um Gott (in seinen Eigenschaften), die Weltzeit und die Ewigkeit zu bedeuten. Die Eigenschaften sind also zum Teil selbständig geworden.”

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In the visions, the interaction between the allegory and allegoresis depends on these properties and their signifying powers. First, the allegory mentions the properties of things next to the things themselves, thus subsuming a task that is actually that of allegoresis. For example, the mountain in the first vision of Scivias is said to be great and iron-coloured, and it is on the basis of these two adjectives that the mountain is later identified as the eternity of the kingdom of God. Second, the allegory gives the properties of things instead of the things themselves. For example, gold indicates the beginning or dawn of the church, because gold is a property of the dawn. These two strategies mostly concern the nouns and adjectives of the allegory. The other parts of speech (adverbs, verbs, conjunctions, prepositions) are rather transposed on the basis of direct metaphors and figures of speech, for instance when “supra” (“above”) means “omnia excellens” (“transcends everything”). These kind of connections, the links between things rather than the things themselves, are fundamental. In sum, it seems that the text is devoted to linking the allegory as closely as possible to the allegoresis not only regarding form (the glossing) but also regarding reference. If the reference from allegorical element to exegetical element is not already a basic metaphoric relationship, it is always redirected to such basic relations, via the properties of a thing. I suggest that Hildegard adopts this method of semantic transfer via properties in order to create a coherent system of reference between the elements of her allegory and their allegoresis.121 Allegorical Handbooks The close connection of allegory and allegoresis in the visions, then, depends on a continuous use of the method of glossing with the system of 121  It could seem a logical step at this moment to turn to Hildegard’s actual encyclopaedic works. However, these do not show more than a general affinity with the method that we find in the books of visions. In her book about the “subtilitates diuersarum naturarum creaturarum” (this is how she describes the book in Liber vite meritorum, where she lists the works that she has written at that point), Hildegard discusses the natural and medicinal characteristics of plants, trees, stones, fish, birds, land animals, nasty animals, and metals. Remarkably, this encyclopaedia is not allegorical, except for the prefaces to the chapters on birds and beasts.The work was not included in her collected works (the Riesenkodex) and had a very rough afterlife. We now have two separate works that derive from one original: Physica and Causae et Curae. On the manuscript tradition, see Hildegard of Bingen, Physica: Liber subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010).

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semantic transfer that is also found in allegorical handbooks. But how does a method for biblical exegesis become a method for writing allegory? This supposes a shift from exegetical to generally linguistic and epistemological frameworks as discussed earlier in this chapter. Here, I want to illustrate how, in the twelfth century, the exegetical reference of the single word was incorporated into larger structures of language. To do this, I will contrast Alan of Lille’s Distinctiones with the tradition of allegorical handbooks that comes before. Then, I will apply these insights to Hildegard’s method and the way in which it moves from the reference of the single word to a continued allegory. The break between Alan and the tradition arises when the simple link from word to thing to word can no longer be guaranteed. The whole principle of the allegorical handbook is predicated on the analogy between word and thing, the idea that they signify in the same way. The allegorical encyclopaedia is a handbook for deciphering ‘the language of things’ as it is reflected in the language of words. An encyclopaedia describes the world and the things of which the world consists. Allegorical encyclopaedias read these res naturae as a message from God. This is what Friedrich Ohly calls Dingbedeutung: “Each thing meant by the word has itself a set of meanings, the number of which is identical to the sum of the properties of a thing.”122 But an encyclopaedia also discusses the nature of words, most importantly their etymology, and the many meanings which words may carry. Thus, the encyclopaedia joins words to things, because it relates the multiple meanings of words to the many properties of the things to which they refer. Things are more trustworthy because they are created by God, whereas words are slippery and human. Language is conventional, but the language of things is natural. Language seeks a unity between word and meaning which it can never quite achieve, but things are not bound to one meaning and reflect the richness of divine symbolism.123 On the one hand, language can rise above itself, when it refers figuratively to a spiritual meaning beyond the literal. On the other hand, the endless polysemy of things can be brought under control and made useful when it is captured by a textual allegory in a divinely inspired book. What the allegorical encyclopaedia does is to bring the two into accord. It opens 122  Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalters,” 4. “Jedes mit dem Wort gemeinte eine Ding hat selbst eine Menge von Bedeutungen, deren Zahl mit der Summe der Eigenschaften eines Dinges identisch ist.” 123  Brinkmann, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik, 45–46.

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up the referentiality of words while it restricts that of things. In encyclopaedic practice, the meanings of things are restricted by numbering them, while the meanings of words are acknowledged to go far beyond the ‘proper’ meaning. I will give a few examples of how allegorical encyclopaedias develop this symbiosis of word and thing in their quest to make the spiritual accessible to the human mind. First, Eucherius of Lyon (fifth century) can be called an early proponent of the “distinctiones” tradition, which distinguishes the figural meanings that words carry in Scripture. A difference with the later twelfth-century tradition, however, is that he does not follow an alphabetical but rather an ontological order from God and the higher creatures downwards to humans. At the beginning of the Formulae spiritalis intelligentiae, he explains his aim: “Let us explain the true significations of names and words, according to which they are involved in allegory, which is a gift that God has given us.”124 Thus, Eucherius’ book is an aid for developing allegorical interpretations. His first entries, for the parts of God’s body, go like this: Oculi Domini intelleguntur inspectio diuina; in psalmo: Oculi Domini super iustos. Aures Domini cum exaudire dignatur; in psalmo: Et aures eius in preces eorum. Os Domini sermo ad homines; in propheta: Os Domini locutum est. Verbum Domini Filius; in psalmo: Eructauit cor meum uerbum bonum. The eyes of the Lord are to be understood as the divine inquiry; in the psalm: The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. The ears of the Lord are to be considered as heeding something; in the psalm: And his ears are attentive to their cry. The mouth of the Lord is his message to people; in the prophet: The mouth of the Lord has spoken. The word of God is his Son; in the psalm: My heart has brought forth a good word.125

Simply put, these rules explain the metaphor that governs the meaning of sentences in Scripture. His method is a simple transposition from figural to literal meaning.

 Eucherius of Lyon, Formulae spiritalis intellegentiae (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 4.  Eucherius of Lyon, 5.

124 125

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The most famous late antique encyclopaedia, Isidore of Seville’s seventh-­century Etymologiae, is mainly known for its allegorical etymology. It contains explanations such as the following one: “Sol appellatus eo quod solus appareat, obscuratis fulgore suo cunctis sideribus” (“The sun is called that way because it appears to be alone, obscuring with its brightness all the stars”).126 As this example makes clear, etymology may follow the exact same method of translation via properties: “sol” has the property of shining brighter than everything else in the sky, and therefore of appearing “solus.” This reasoning is reversed, so that the property is what gives the sun its name. As this example shows, purely linguistic considerations are also situated within the state of things. As Andy Merrils explains, Isidore “was acutely aware that language offered a simulacrum of the world—one that could perhaps be shaped and parsed more readily than the mundane world outside the scriptorium window, but one which nevertheless was itself marked by a series of semiotic conventions.”127 This combination of things and words is made explicit by the Carolingian rewriter of the Etymologiae: Raban Maur’s De Rerum Naturae introduces itself as a book “about the propriety of words and the mystical signification of things.”128 Or rather, the book presents a continuation between the natural state of things, their verbal expressions, and their spiritual natures.129 For instance, the entry for ‘sun’ first describes its incredible luminousness, and then moves to what it signifies in Scripture, namely sometimes the Lord, sometimes the clarity of the saints, the brightness of wisdom, or the beauty of virtue, but sometimes also, on the contrary, the

126   Isidore of Sevilla, Etymologiae, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), III,71. 127  Andy Merrills, “Isidore’s Etymologies: On Words and Things,” in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Jason König and Greg Woolf (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 301–24. 128  Raban Maur, De Rerum Naturis, prohemium 1. 129  Raban Maur, prohemium 1. “Sunt enim in eo plura exposita de rerum naturis, et uerborum proprietatibus, necnon etiam de mystica rerum significatione quod idcirco ita ordinandum estimaui, ut lector prudens continuatim positam inueniret historicam et mysticam singularem rerum explanationem.”/“It contains many explanations about the natures of things and the properties of words, as well as about the mystical signification of things. I have wanted to structure it like this so that the smart reader would see the continuity between the historical and mystical explanation of each single thing.”

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heat of persecution or the terrors of earthly life.130 Note how the basis for comparison is included in these examples: the sun does not refer directly to the saints, but to the clarity of the saints, and similarly to the radiance of wisdom, the beauty of virtue, and the burning heat of persecution. In the twelfth century, allegorical handbooks undergo some major changes. For instance, allegorical dictionaries emerge, which order the lemmas alphabetically. One of these allegorical dictionaries is the Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium of Alan of Lille.131 It is written with practical applications in mind but at the same time attempts to deal with difficult philosophical problems. This brings the exegetical method of translation through properties to a whole new level. In the prologue, Alan describes the danger of not knowing “theologicorum nominum […] virtutes,”132 the actual meanings of the theological terms found in Scripture. The danger is considerable, because Scripture is a place […] ubi rem ut est sermo non loquitur, ubi vocabula a propriis significationibus peregrinantur et novas admirari videntur; ubi divina descendit excellentia ut humana ascendat intelligentia; ubi nomina pronominantur, ubi adjectiva substantivantur, ubi verbum non est nota ejus quod de altero dicitur, ubi sine inhaerentia praedicatio, ubi sine materia subjectio, ubi affirmatio impropria, negatio vera, ubi constructio non subjacet legibus Donati, ubi translatio aliena a regulis Tullii, ubi enuntiatio peregrina ab Aristotelis documento, ubi fidei remota a rationis argumento. […] where a word does not refer to a thing as it is, where terms wander away from their proper meanings and seem to consider new ones; where divine excellence comes down so that human intelligence might climb up; where nouns behave as pronouns, adjectives as nouns, where the word is not a sign of something said about something else, where the predication is without inherence, the subject has not matter, the affirmation is improper but the negation true, where the construction of a sentence does not obey the rules of Donatus, where metaphor works differently from the precepts of Cicero, where the statement is a stranger to the instruction of Aristotle, where faithfulness is removed from the argument of reason.133 130  Raban Maur, VIII,10. “Therefore, the sun in Holy Scripture sometimes means the Lord our saviour, sometimes the clarity of his saints, sometimes the brightness of wisdom, sometimes the beauty of the virtues, or, on the contrary, sometimes the heat of persecution and the terrors of the present life.” 131  Alan of Lille, Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium, Patrologia Latina 210 (Paris, 1855). 132  Alan of Lille, col. 687B. 133  Alan of Lille, col. 687B–C.

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Language is used differently in Scripture. But whereas, traditionally, this difference was explained by saying that scriptural language has a deeper connection to its referents, to things and their significations, Alan says that scriptural words do not refer to the things as they are (“rem ut est sermo non loquitur”). Here, the deviation of a linguistic form from its proper significations in Scripture (in other words, rhetorical language use) is not seen as a conduit to the reality of properties and extra-textual significations but as an obstacle to interpretation. It is not so much rhetoric itself that is the obstacle, however, but rather the fact that rhetorical scriptural language does not work as rhetoric traditionally does. Alan warns of the fact that grammar, nor rhetoric, nor logic function in the Bible as they do in in Donatus, Cicero, and Aristotle. The problem is that when these things refer to the divine, they no longer function as they would when referring to the human. Thus, a break appears in the perfect continuity of the encyclopaedic method between God, reality, language, and humans. Alan’s dictionary is more than a dictionary; it is also a standpoint in the philosophical discussion on theological language.134 The question that this discussion puts forward is how theology must use words to describe God: When is language used properly and what kinds of translations take place? It is a recalibration of the balance between rhetoric and theology, a move “from metaphor to theology.”135 This change of focus is reflected in the choice of words. For instance, the first words that are discussed are ‘a,’ ‘abies,’ and ‘abire’ (‘from,’ ‘fir tree,’ ‘depart’): a preposition, a noun, and a verb. Earlier dictionaries present a list of nouns, which is logical because they are based on the idea that a word refers to a thing. Regarding the actual distinctions, however, this radically new method does not necessarily cause much change. For instance, the sun is still “the clarity of a good deed,” or it is “time, because time is measured according to the movement of the sun, so ‘sun’ figures ‘time’,” or it is “the divine nature of Christ, which illumines his human nature as the sun illumines the moon.”136 As Gillian Evans says:

134  Gillian Evans, “Alan of Lille’s Distinctiones and the Problem of Theological Language,” Sacris Erudiri 24 (1980): 67–86; Luisa Valente, “Langage et théologie pendant la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle,” in Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen (Tübingen: Narr, 1995), 33–54. 135  Wanda Zemler-Cizewski, “From Metaphor to Theology: Proprium and Translatum in Cicero, Augustine, Eriugena, and Abelard,” Florilegium 13 (1994): 37–52. 136  Alan of Lille, Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium, col.947D-48B.

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In many respects the dictionary is disappointing. Alan has made great claims for Scripture’s capacity to break the rules of grammar and dialectic in a dramatic and manificent [sic] manner, but he has not attempted to substantiate these ambitious claims in detail in his dictionary. In restricting himself to single words, dictiones, he has made it difficult for himself to do so, since most of the rules he lists in his preface involve whole sentences, statements, propositions.137

Alan relocates the encyclopaedia’s method of the transfer of meaning to the general question of language. No longer only a method of exegesis, it becomes the principle of language’s polysemy. This implies a shift to the analysis of complete sentences, which sits uneasily with the concept of a dictionary. The other allegorical encyclopaedias I named are based on the rhetorical-­hermeneutic concept of metaphor, as expressed by the definition of metaphor that can be found in Donatus: the transfer of words and things.138 I have shown that the tradition of allegorical encyclopaedias and dictionaries is built precisely on this continuity between things and words. In the words of Margaret Nims, “as words are receptive of polysemousness, so things are receptive of multiple signification.”139 In the encyclopaedic method of allegorical exegesis, it is because of the fact that things have properties and multiple significations that words have multiple meanings through different metaphors based on those properties. Metaphors and other tropes, which function through a change of meaning, reflect the structure of the natural world. For Alan, however, the proper meaning of a word is its reference to the divine, not its reference to natural properties. Alan thus transfers the biblical-exegetical method of Dingbedeutung, if not precisely to general language use, then to language as it should be, namely philosophical language. Something similar is the case in Hildegard’s use of this exegetical method. Instead of using it as a tool for doing allegorical exegesis, she uses it to construct an allegory that is able, because of its special use of language, to enter into a perfect exegetical dialogue with its own allegoresis. As we have seen, Hildegard similarly takes this method out of the confines  Evans, “Alan of Lille’s Distinctiones and the Problem of Theological Language,” 81.  Donatus, Ars Grammatica, Grammatici Latini IV (Teubner, 1864), IV,6 (p.  399). “Metaphora est rerum uerborumque translatio.” 139   Margaret Nims, “Translatio: ‘Difficult Statement’ in Medieval Poetic Theory,” University of Toronto Quarterly 43, no. 3 (1974): 217–18. 137 138

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of allegorical exegesis per se and makes it into the method of thinking, of reading the world and human actions. Contrary to what we find in Alan’s prologue, this does not lead to a break between the meaning of words and the properties of things. Rather, Hildegard makes the continuity between them into her own model for a perfect philosophical language, which, I suggest, is what we find in the visions. Nevertheless, as in Alan’s case, when the semantic transfer via properties moves from the level of the word to that of language, it no longer includes only nouns. Every word of the allegory can be meaningful for the allegoresis, nouns as well as verbs, prepositions, and adjectives. In reaction to this, it seems, the text draws the more basic elements into the foreground, those things that are normally considered only as the properties of things. The allegories do not use specific plants or animals, but the most basic elements of life—mountain, tree, light, shadow, colour, and form. These are not only the ‘things’ which are discussed in encyclopaedias but also the qualities of things as they stand on their own. Christel Meier has written about this kind of ‘Qualitätenallegorese’ and the lack of acknowledgement for it in medieval theories of allegoresis. She says: How a rose, a lion or a unicorn, how Babylon, winter or the number seven come to mean something has been considered [by the medieval theory of allegory]; but as far as I can see, there is no theoretical testimony about the way in which red, green, blue and the other colours attain their significance, which they nevertheless possess in practical allegory.140

In allegorical hermeneutics, qualities function as properties that point to the significations of things. The encyclopaedic focus on individual things goes hand in hand with a privileging of nouns to the exclusion of other kinds of words. In such a system, qualities are merely viewed as mediators of meaning and not as allegorical elements in themselves, although they obviously function as such in the practice of allegorical exegesis. We witness a similar kind of contradiction between Hildegard’s language theory and her allegorical form. Her theory only engages with the 140  Christel Meier, “Das Problem der Qualitätenallegorese,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974): 388.“Wie eine Rose, ein Löwe oder Einhorn, wie Babylon, der Winter oder die Zahl Sieben zur Bedeutung kommen, hat [die mittelalterliche Theorie der Allegorese] bedacht; auf welchem Wege aber Rot, Grün, Blau und die übrigen Farben zu ihrer Signifikanz gelangen, die sie in der praktischen Allegorese doch besitzen, darüber ist—soweit ich sehe—kein theoretisches Zeugnis beizubringen.”

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“names” of creatures. However, the practice of her allegoresis of the visions treats every verbal element as a starting point for figural transfer: adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and prepositions. In contrast to nouns, this kind of words is not the main focus of a culture’s symbolism; rather, they are the inconspicuous words which underlie a culture’s most basic metaphorical patterns. These are also the words by which the qualities or properties of nouns are found, because the complex and often indirect symbolism of nouns relies on these directly accessible figural patterns. The interplay between the visionary allegory and its allegoresis functions within this broad field of figuralism rather than within the indirect cultural symbolism at the level of the nouns or things. It is not concerned with the result of the translation of meaning that allegorical encyclopaedias establish, but with the system that makes it function. It is this system that the visions represent. The Cognitive Dynamics of Reading Allegorically When an allegory occurs together with its exegesis, the combination mostly entails a focus on the tools or circumstances that make reference possible: the presence of a teacher, the intervention of transcendent knowledge, or even the intervention of time, which sometimes brings new insights. What condition of learning comes to the fore because of Hildegard’s combination of allegory with allegoresis? One part of the answer is obvious: in the description of the vision, Hildegard does not understand the vision’s allegory until the voice of God begins to speak and explains it to her. The boundary between allegory and allegoresis is marked by the intervention of God as a teacher. But there is a second part to this answer, which has to do with the nature of what God teaches and the formal bond between allegory and allegoresis. I argue that the circular dynamics between allegory and allegoresis, the way in which they complement each other and function in unison, and the way in which that process always starts again, highlights cognition as the mediator of knowledge, next to the necessity of divine grace (which is, in any case, always the condition for rationality). I explained that for Hildegard, thinking is exegetical. The exegetical method, which aligns things and words, rises above itself and becomes not only a textual form but the shape of thought itself. Mental images do not even receive a mention; language is the only mediator of thought. Although this does not necessarily imply that the allegorical visions cannot

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function as images, I think it must alert us to the fact that they are primarily verbal structures. Hildegard further describes several ways of knowing the things that make up the world, namely as perceived by the senses, as known in their natural state, and as carrying a spiritual value. These two latter elements are only accessible through words, because only through words can the powers or vires of things be known. Words are the tools that the mind employs to discover the nature of the things it perceives via the senses. The method of glossing is found within this cognitive model, because it is focused on the single word. The method of semantic transfer through properties is also incorporated, as the way in which the mind gains knowledge of a thing. The dynamics of close correspondence between allegory and allegoresis in the visions reflect the cognitive theory predicated on the semantic transfer of the single word. The dynamic of going back and forth between image and interpretation in the visions, then, can be said to represent the movement of the mind from observing to interpreting. The relation between allegory and allegoresis is at the same time that between words and meaning, and between thought and insight. Allegory in this scheme cannot function without allegoresis, just as a word cannot be separated from its meaning; it is their interaction that produces meaning. This is because the oscillation between allegory and allegoresis is the process of meaning-giving itself. My view offers an alternative to the idea that the incomprehension evoked by the allegory is followed by the aha-­ Erlebnis of the allegoresis. It is not so that the allegory opens interpretation and the allegoresis closes it. Rather, the allegoresis guides the interpretation of the allegory, and the allegory gives structure to the allegoresis. In their interaction, they illustrate the process of cognition.

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Teske, Roland. 2001. Augustine’s Philosophy of Memory. In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, 148–158. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Valente, Luisa. 1995. Langage et théologie pendant la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle. In Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen, 33–54. Tübingen: Narr. ———. 2009. Verbum Mentis—Vox Clamantis: The Notion of the Mental Word in Twelfth-Century Theology. In The Word in Medieval Logic, Theology and Psychology, ed. Tesuro Shimizu and Charles Burnett, 365–402. Turnhout: Brepols. Vance, Eugene. 2008. Seeing God: Augustine, Sensation, and the Mind’s Eye. In Rethinking the Medieval Senses: Heritage, Fascinations, Frames, ed. Stephen G.  Nichols, Andreas Kablitz, and Alison Calhoun, 13–29. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Woolgar, Chris M. 2006. The Senses in Late Medieval England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Wouters, Dinah. 2018. ‘Nisi per Nomina’. Language as the Medium of Thought in Hildegard of Bingen’s Thinking. Revue d’histoire Ecclésiastique 113 (1–2): 66–93. Zemler-Cizewski, Wanda. 1994. From Metaphor to Theology: Proprium and Translatum in Cicero, Augustine, Eriugena, and Abelard. Florilegium 13: 37–52.

CHAPTER 7

Allegorical Revelation through Prophecy

The previous chapter has described how Hildegard transforms allegorical hermeneutics into a model of cognition. Not surprisingly, this focus on cognition and the structural role of allegory runs through Hildegard’s thinking on other matters as well. In this chapter, I move from individual cognition to the way in which knowledge is produced in history, namely through revelation and through prophecy. I suggest that Hildegard develops these theoretical clusters to describe her idea of herself as a prophet and her practices of prophetic writing.

Allegorical Interpretation as an Essential Part of Revelation History The Old, the New, and the Interpretation of Each The third book of Scivias revolves around the Edifice of Salvation, an allegorical building symbolising salvation history. One of its elements is a triangular column grey as steel and sharp as a sword at its three edges. From the eastern edge grows a tree on which the patriarchs and the prophets are seated, who are looking admiringly towards the northern edge. Between these two edges, the surface of the column is like the bark of a tree from which a bud will grow. From the northern edge flows a bright glow, extending towards the southern edge. In that glow, Hildegard sees the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5_7

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apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and other holy people. The southern edge is bow-shaped (narrow at the extremes, broader in the middle), and at the top there glows a light with an immense clarity. In this light, there appears a dove carrying a ray of gold. This column, says Hildegard, stands for “the ineffable mystery of the Word of God.”1 It has three edges because the true Word fulfils both the New and the Old Testament, and these two testaments are clarified and explained (“enucleata”) for the sake of the believers. The three edges stand for moments of progressive insight into revelation, both on the historical, collective level and on the individual level. The edges are sharp as swords from the bottom to the top because they represent “three edges falling into each other, namely the old law and the new grace and the explanation of the faithful doctors, in which the holy person performs what is right, namely from the beginning of its inception beginning with the good as if from the bottom and then reaching higher up towards the perfect as if towards the top, when it is done.”2 The word for edge, “acumen,” signifies both material and intellectual sharpness. Its adjective, “incidentia,” is likewise polysemous in this context: it can signify that the edges fall into each other, or meet each other, but taken from another verbal root, the word can equally signify cutting into something, or engraving. So, these “tria incidentia acumina” seem to represent the three written testimonies to the truth—the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Church Fathers’ exegesis—which fall into each other and fall together in the sharp mind of the believer who receives all this wisdom. The eastern edge is the “primus ortus inceptionis cognoscere Deum” (“first beginning to knowing God”), namely the knowledge of God derived from the Old Testament.3 The side that connects this edge and the northern one is the prefiguration at play between Old and New Testament history. The northern edge is the proclamation of redemption in the New Testament. From this edge shines a splendour in the direction of the southern edge, which reaches “the good people,” that is: those who profoundly examine the words of the Old and New Testaments.4 The southern edge thus stands for the work of the exegetes:  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), III,4,1. “Quapropter et haec columna, quam ultra praedictam turrim praecursus uoluntatis Dei uides, designat ineffabile mysterium Verbi Dei.” 2  Hildegard of Bingen, III,4,5. 3  Hildegard of Bingen, III,4,6. 4  Hildegard of Bingen, III,4,10. 1

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[…] profunda et exquisita sapientia principalium magistrorum per calorem Spritus sancti, qui obscura in lege et prophetia aperuerunt et qui in euangeliis ostenderunt germen quod fructuosum fecerunt ad intellegendum, tangentes exteriorem materiam Scripturarum in opere bonitatis Patris et suauiter ruminantes in ea mysticam significationem. […] the deep and exquisite wisdom of the principal teachers through the warmth of the Holy Spirit, who have opened up what was obscure in the law and in the prophets and who in the Gospels have shown us the seed that they have made fruitful to our understanding, by touching the outer matter of the Scriptures in the work of the goodness of the Father and by sweetly reflecting upon the mystical significance of it.5

In this discussion on the dissemination of the Word of God, the emphasis is on the act of interpretation. The act of reading Scripture allegorically is placed next to the revelation of the Old and New Testaments themselves. Allegoresis uncovers new knowledge in the old texts and therefore becomes a next stage of intellectual enlightenment. The fact that the work of exegesis is included as a third part in the process of revelation is remarkable. It is comparable to an idea found in Hugh of Saint Victor, who includes the writings of the Church Fathers and of “an innumerable number of other doctors” as a part of the New Testament.6 We find in Isidore and in Raban Maur that the Old Testament has three parts, whereas the New has two.7 Hugh prefers a symmetry between the two. This is what he says in his Didascalicon: Primus ordo Novi Testamenti quattuor habet volumina: Matthaei, Marci, Lucae, Ioannis; secundus, similiter quattuor: Epistulas Pauli numero quattuordecim sub uno volumine contextas, et canonicas Epistulas, Apocalypsim et Actus apostolorum. in tertio ordine primum locum habent Decretalia, quos canones, id est, regulares appellamus, deinde sanctorum patrum et doctorum ecclesiae scripta: Hieronymi, Augustini, Gregorii, Ambrosii, Isidori, Origenis, Bedae, et  aliorum multorum orthodoxorum, quae tam infinita sunt, ut numerari non possint.  Hildegard of Bingen, III,4,6.  Maura Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi: die Schrifthermeneutik in der Visionstrilogie Hildegards von Bingen (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012), 121. cf., Lesley Smith, “What Was the Bible in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries?,” in Neue Richtungen in Der Hoch- Und Spätmittelalterlichen Bibelexegese, ed. Robert E.  Lerner and Luckner Müller (München: Oldenbourg, 1996), 3–4. 7  Isidore of Sevilla, Etymologiae, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), VI,1; Raban Maur, De Rerum Naturis (Migne, 1851), V,1. 5 6

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The first part of the New Testament has four volumes: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. The second also has four: the letters of Paul, fourteen of them brought together in one volume, and the canonical letters, the book of Revelation, and the Acts of the Apostles. The third part contains, first of all, the papal rulings, which we call canonical or regular, then the writings of the Church Fathers and the doctors of the church: Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, Isidore, Origen, Bede, and of many other orthodox writers, whose number is so endless that they cannot be named individually.8

These three parts correspond to the three parts of the Old Testament: the Law corresponds to the Gospel, the prophets to the apostles, and the “hagiographi” to the “doctores.”9 The extension of Scripture to other inspired writings is not exceptional: as Jean Châtillon notes, this was quite common among ecclesiastical writers from the tenth to the twelfth century.10 Nevertheless, he adds that Hugh softens his claim in another work, where he compares the third part to the deuterocanonical books: although these books are read and commented, they do not altogether belong to the canon.11 Hildegard does not necessarily speak about the order of the books of the Old and New Testaments. Only the third edge, that of allegoresis, is explicitly identified with written material. Hildegard’s focus is rather on how all three edges contribute to the insight gained by the believer and on the value of the act of interpretation itself. Therefore, her third moment of revelation is more open than that of Hugh. It does not so much give a list of names and books as affirm the ongoing activation of Christ’s revelation. Pondering over Hugh’s division, Lesley Smith advanced the hypothesis that it reflects the idea of the glossed Bible, where the expositions are an integral part of the base text, not only formally but also authoritatively. She concludes, “Hugh, then, is taking the doctrine of continuous revelation seriously.”12 It seems that Hildegard does so too. 8  Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi (Washington: The Catholic university press, 1939), IV,2 (p. 72). 9  Hugh of Saint Victor, IV,2 (p. 72). “quod sicut post legem, prophetae, et post prophetas, hagiographi, ita post Evangelium, apostoli, et post apostolos, doctores ordine successerunt.”/“Because just as the law is followed by the prophets and the prophets by the hagiographers, so the Gospel is followed by the apostles and the apostles by the doctors.” 10  Jean Châtillon, “La bible dans les écoles du XIIe siècle,” in Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, ed. Guy Lobrichon and Pierre Riché (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 180. 11  Châtillon, 180. 12  Smith, “What Was the Bible in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries?,” 4.

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Allegory in Deeds and in Words Liber vite meritorum expands and modifies this view.13 The book’s second part proceeds with the description of the man in the cosmos that began in the first part.14 This figure has four wings: two growing from each shoulder and covering his arms, one on his back and one appearing from his chest. In each of these wings, books appear of different materials and colours: the two on the left and right have two pages of different colours, while of the two on the front and back only the material and the colour are described. Three of the books, with the exception of the one in front, have biblical quotes inscribed on them. The voice of God explains that this vision stands for the means by which the man in the cosmos fights against ignorance, namely “all the instruments of the Old and the New Testament and all the means for doing good works.”15 The wing on the left stands for the Old Testament and the one on the right for the New. The wing at the back represents the Old Testament prophecies, while the one in front signifies the explication of these other texts by the “ueri doctores”: Et etiam in dorso suo alam unam, ac in pectore suo alam unam habet: que sunt mysteria illa que ante natiuitatem Filii Dei, quasi in dorso eius, per manum protectionis sue in ueteri prophetia multis obscuritatibus uelata erant, que nunc ueri doctores, secundum quod ea Deus denudare uoluerit, aperire contendunt, sicut etiam et nunc in profunditate sapientie ad defensionem spiritalium mysteria noui testamenti uelut de puteo hauriunt […]. And on the back it has one wing and on its chest it has one wing: these are the mysteries which, before the birth of the Son of God, were veiled by many obscurities in the old prophecy by the hand of his protection, which now the true doctors strive to open up, as much as God wants them to be laid bare. This they also do when, in the profundity of their wisdom, they draw as if from a well the mysteries of the new testament, to the defence of the spiritual.16

13  Another discussion of the passage that follows, with a focus on the use of colours, is in Christel Meier, “Die Bedeutung der Farben im Werk Hildegards von Bingen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien, no. 6 (1972): 344–50. 14  An analysis of this vision can be found in Susanne Ruge, “The Theology of Repentance: Observations on the Liber Vite Meritorum,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra L. Stoud, and George Ferzoco (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 221–48. 15  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, CCCM 90 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), II,18. 16  Hildegard of Bingen, II,20.

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The wing at the back curves its tip towards the left wing: these prophecies belong to the Old Testament and provide “carnal things for those who live carnally.”17 The wing at the chest, however, is spliced and curves both left and right. This refers to the fact that the exegetes who live after the Incarnation explain both old and new.18 To the three sides of the column in Scivias has been added a fourth element: that of Old Testament prophecy represented by the wing at the back. In a way, Hildegard shifts towards Hugh of Saint Victor’s symmetrical model. Like Hugh, she now divides the Old Testament into parts. However, it is not the act of division itself that seems to interest her, because she leaves out the well-established third part of the Old Testament. Rather, her emphasis is on the parallelism between, on the one hand, Old Law and New Testament (the shoulder wings) and, on the other hand, prophecy and explanation (the back and front wings). The books that are imposed over the wings specify this parallelism. The Old and New Testament books (left and right) have two pages in Hildegard’s allegory, but prophecy and explanation (back and front) only have one page. The difference between the wings and the books is that between available knowledge and activated knowledge. Whereas the wings stand for the knowledge that is available to humans by means of the holy texts, the books stand for the rationality by which people can use these texts to gain knowledge. Hildegard states that rationality “produces, arranges, and discerns everything that is given by God.”19 This rationality, which Hildegard represents as an act of ordering, is both the divine rationality ordering things and the human rationality able to discern this order.20 It finds its form in texts, because the only way that humans can know something is through words. In the distinction between wings and books, or revealed wisdom and rationality, we recognise Hildegard’s epistemological view, which makes a clear distinction between the object of knowledge on the one hand and the cognitive means by which it can be known on the other. How then does the feature of the books mark a distinction between the two pairs of wings? The books symbolising the Old and New Testament  Hildegard of Bingen, II,22.  Hildegard of Bingen, II,23. 19  Hildegard of Bingen, II,26. 20  Fabio Chávez Alvarez, “Die brennende Vernunft”: Studien zur Semantik der “rationalitas” bei Hildegard von Bingen (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1991); Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 129–30. 17 18

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have two pages, whereas the books symbolising prophecy and explanation have only one page each. Although the law and prophecy are one, they function differently. The difference is stated as follows. The double pages of the left wing stand for the double ostensio contained in the Old Testament, namely both its historical narration and the prefiguration of the New Testament by means of this narration. Similarly, the double pages of the right wing stand for the double demonstratio of the New Testament, namely Christ as a human and Christ as the son of God. The difference with the single page of the Old Testament prophecy is that the latter has no such double function. It only speaks about one thing: by means of allegorical images, the prophets speak of Christ and the church. Similarly, the allegorical explanations of the later exegetes have only one page because they bring one message, since all the sages from both the old and the New Testament have said one thing and done one thing in Christ.21 The achievement of their allegoresis is that it is able to bring to the fore this unified message in Scripture, by relating all that has been written to Christ and the church. In essence, the difference between the books with two pages and the books with one page reflects the difference between what Bede called “allegoria factis” and “allegoria verbis tantummodo” (“allegory in facts” and “allegory only in words”). On the one hand, there is the sort of allegory at the basis of which is a historical narration, a material presence not replaced by what it prefigures. Such is the allegorical dynamic between the historical books of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Such is also the dynamic between the narration of the life of Christ as a human and what that narration signifies, namely the fulfilment of the conjunction of human and divine. On the other hand, there are allegories whose value lies exclusively in their implicit reference, or their interpretation, so that their literal or explicit reference has no further value in itself. Such are the parables of the New Testament or the prophecies of the Old Testament: they are allegorical creations, not historical events. The vision thus separates the prophecies from the historical books of the Old Testament on the basis of the fact that their allegorical interpretation functions differently. At the same time, what differentiates them from the rest of the Old Testament aligns them with the work of allegorical exegesis. Like allegorical prophecy, allegorical exegesis ultimately points to only one meaning, moving the material from two pages onto the same page.  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, II,31.

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To sum up, this vision again puts all the emphasis on the explanation of revelation. First, it does this by distinguishing between the wings and the books, where the books are the rationality that enables explanation. Second, it again integrates the practice of allegorical exegesis into its schema of scriptural revelation. Third, it makes a distinction on the basis of different kinds of allegory and different kinds of allegorical interpretation. Veils and Illumination In her book on the visionary hermeneutics of Hildegard, Maura Zátonyi has offered a viewpoint on these texts that differs somewhat from mine. For Zátonyi, the central point of the passage that I just discussed is that divine mysteries cannot, in the end, be unveiled. Human rationality can only interpret and discover up to a certain point.22 The veil always remains, as simultaneously a concealment and a protection. “The ‘protectio’ protects both the divine mysteries, insofar as they cannot be explored and grasped by humans to the end, and humans, who would be overwhelmed by a revelation of the divine beyond their capacity to comprehend.”23 Zátonyi then moves to one of the central claims of her book, which is that this structure is also the idea behind Hildegard’s own visions. That is: the allegory is not meant to be understood, but to bewilder its readers. She connects this to the concept of negative theology: to know God by comparing him to what is dissimilar. I read this passage differently, namely as expressing a conviction that divine mysteries can and should and will, in time, be understood. The fact that no human can fully penetrate divine truth is taken for granted: Hildegard never talks about what is beyond human comprehension. When she talks about divine mysteries, she means only those earthly things through which humans can get a grasp of divine reality. Hildegard puts it clearly in the first part of Liber vite meritorum that the mysteries of God are not hidden, because God himself is not a hidden fire, but one that is at work in creation:  Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 130.  Zátonyi, 131. “Die ‘protectio’ schützt sowohl die göttlichen Geheimnisse, insofern sie vom Menschen nicht bis zum Letzten erforscht und ergründet werden können, als auch den Menschen, der von einer Offenbarung des Göttlichen über seine Fassungsfähigkeit hinaus überwältigt wäre.” 22 23

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Et Deus non est ignis absconsus nec ignis tacens, sed ignis operans est, quia potestas Dei supra omnem intellectum et cogitationem creaturarum in claritate mysteriorum et secretorum suorum omnia disponens et omnia regens est, ut caput totum corpus regit: quoniam rationabilem uitam fecit, scilicet cum oculi uident, aures audiunt, nares odorant, et cum os uerba in rationalitate profert. And God is no hidden fire or silent fire, but an active fire, because the power of God orders everything and rules everything in the clarity of his mysteries and secrets, beyond the intellect and the thought of his creatures, just as the head rules the whole body, because it makes life rational, namely when the eyes see, the ears hear, the nose smells, and when the mouth utters words with rationality.24

It is true that the power of God is beyond the intellect and thought of his creatures. Still, the mysteries and secrets according to which he orders everything are accessible to humans because they were created rational. When Hildegard states that God is not hidden but active in creation, she takes for granted that one can only talk about God when one means that aspect of him that people can know. I will now discuss the concepts of protectio and ostensio in this light. I think we should heed the decisive influence of time. For Hildegard, revelation is an ongoing process that will unfold throughout the whole course of history. That which at first is obscure is only what is not yet revealed: […] quoniam Deus in illa [i.e., protectio] et per illam omnia seruat, ac per eam opera etiam illa occultat, que in antiquo secreto consilio suo occultata, nondum ulli manifestare disposuit. Nam quamuis Deus cotidie noua miracula operetur, multa tamen in secreto consilii sui sunt, que nondum in apertione manifestationis produxit, sicut nec cogitationes hominis sciuntur, antequam in manifesta opera procedunt. [Emphasis added] […] because God protects everything in his protection and through his protection, and hides the works with it which he has decided to hide in his ancient secret council and not yet to show anyone. For although God works new miracles every day, many things are in his secret council which he has not yet produced into open revelation, just as one does not know the thoughts of a person before they are translated into actions. [Emphasis added]25

As this passage shows, the same metaphor of putting thought into speech, which Hildegard commonly uses in relation to creation and the Incarnation,  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, I,25.  Hildegard of Bingen, II,19.

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is also used for revelation after the Incarnation. In the vision itself, Hildegard says that the philosophers and the wise who abstract wisdom from the Bible are like people who bring up water from a well and who do not stop until they have filled their bucket to the brim. They are also like God, who made all creatures and does not stop creating until all his works are completed.26 Especially interesting is the analogy between God and the exegete, between creating and interpreting. To every work of God corresponds an interpretive act by humans. The whole of creation, then, is truly a book from God to humankind, an act of communication in two directions. The only obstacle is the fact that communication and interpretation take place in time: not everything is said yet, and not everything that has been said has been comprehended. Hildegard mentions twice that secrets are meant to be revealed. First, she explains the meaning of the fact that the four wings of the man in the cosmos are lifted as if ready for flight: the reason is that all the secrets of the Old as well as the New Testament are given to the faithful so that they would become manifest and would be put into practice as good works.27 Therefore, she does not think that there is any aspect of Scripture that will not in time become comprehensible. The secrets of Scripture, after having been interpreted, are meant to incite people to live a better life. They would be useless if they would not serve this purpose. Second, Hildegard admits that human rationality too often leans towards the carnal and that common people often have no clue of what learned people are talking about.28 However, she says, people have faith and intelligence: “because through faith they believe in God, whom they cannot see, and because through the miracles of God they understand what is often very difficult to understand for their intelligence; since they then recognise that they are created by God.”29 In the light of this insight, let us now redefine protectio and ostensio. I think protectio is less the fact that something cannot be known than the fact that it is invisible and thus requires interpretation in order to be known. Protectio is constantly linked to strength,30 and as Hildegard says in a letter written shortly after the completion of Liber vite meritorum,  Hildegard of Bingen, II.  Hildegard of Bingen, II,21. 28  Hildegard of Bingen, II,31. 29  Hildegard of Bingen, II,31. 30  Hildegard of Bingen, II,19; 22; 29. 26 27

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“What is seen is weak, and what is not seen is strong and vital. This is what the human intellect tries to understand, because it does not see it.”31 Zátonyi is right in saying that protectio does not disappear when ostensio appears, but I think this is not because things can never be completely apprehended, but because they remain invisible even after they are understood. To say this differently: protectio means that something is not immediately accessible to the human intellect, and that it therefore should be interpreted before it is understood. An individual act of interpretation is needed for every moment of ostensio. Of course, individual acts of interpretation may follow the lead of another person’s exegesis; the exegete mediates the interpretation of others. There is one condition, namely that there has been a divine manifestatio of the mysteries that are under protection. Before the Incarnation and the manifestation of Christ, there was no possibility of fully understanding the mysteries of the Old Testament. From the moment that God manifests certain truths, however, protectio “brings forth” or “turns into” understanding.32 In conclusion, I see no reason to state that Hildegard’s theology of exegesis focuses on veiling and obscurity. Quite the opposite: I think she stresses communication and interpretation developing through time. Every mystery that God speaks corresponds to a human interpretation. What makes this possible is, again, rationality mediating between the divine and the human. Rationality links what is visible and invisible and orders their meanings so that they correspond.33

Allegory and Forms of Prophecy According to Zátonyi, Hildegard sees revelation as an illumination that always retains its essential obscurity. I think, however, that for Hildegard obscurity is always a shadow that exists by the grace of light and is therefore always awaiting its further illumination. However, both obscurity and illumination are present in the texts. I will now delve deeper into their respective positions. We will see that this question again revolves around the concepts of prophecy, interpretation, and allegory. 31  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars prima: I–XC, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 31R (p. 87). 32  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, II,27–28. “duas ostensiones rectitudinis protulit”; “in duas demonstrationes se convertit.” 33  Hildegard of Bingen, II,31. “[…] all the sages from both the old and the new testament have said one thing and done one thing in Christ.”

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I will begin with an excerpt from the same vision in Liber vite meritorum discussed in the previous section, which seems to be a key passage. In the vision itself, Hildegard distinguishes three kinds of prophecy: “per visionem ac sapientiam ac scientiam” (“through vision and wisdom and knowledge”).34 This triad, so it appears from its exegesis, is trinitarian: Sed et digitus Dei in illo scripserat secreta sua que reuelare uolebat: quia Spiritus sanctus rationalitatem hominis ita perfudit quod prophetabat; et etiam hoc per uisionem faciebat, cum prophete per Spiritum sanctum illuminati, in Spiritu sancto a longe futura preuidebant. Et etiam per sapientiam quidam multa dicebant, quoniam omnipotentia Dei mentes illorum tangebat, quod plurima et plurima in significatione proferebant, ut etiam sapientia omnia edificauit; quidam uero per scientiam, cum Verbum Dei scientiam eorum ita inspiciebat ac insufflabat, quod occulta et absconsa dicebant. But the finger of God had written in prophecy the secrets which he wanted to reveal. For the Holy Spirit fills the rationality of humans in such a way that they begin to prophesy. And they did this through vision, when the prophets, illumined by the Holy Spirit, foretold the distant future in the Holy Spirit. And they also spoke about many things through wisdom, because the omnipotence of God touched their minds so that they brought forth many and many things in signification, as wisdom has constructed everything. And some spoke through knowledge of what is secret and hidden, when the Word of God looked at their knowledge and breathed into it. [Emphasis added]35

To summarise: prophets illumined by the Holy Spirit see the future “through vision,” those touched by the omnipotence of God reveal the significations of things “through wisdom,” and those inspired by the Word of God say things in an occult way, “through knowledge.” My first question is how this fits the dominant conception of prophecy during the Early to High Middle Ages.36 Whereas medieval definitions of  Hildegard of Bingen, II. “through vision and wisdom and knowledge.”  Hildegard of Bingen, II,30. 36  Bernard McGinn, “Prophetic Power in Early Medieval Christianity,” Cristianesimo Nella Storia 17 (1996): 251–69; Niels Christian Hvidt, Christian Prophecy—the Post-Biblical Tradition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Christel Meier, “Nova Verba Prophetae: Evaluation und Reproduktion der prophetischen Rede der Bibel im Mittelalter,” in Prophetie und Autorschaft : Charisma, Heilsversprechen und Gefährdung, ed. Christel Meier and Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2014). 34 35

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prophecy tended to focus on the foretelling of the future,37 the image of the prophet evolved with the times. For Cassiodore, “Prophecy is a divine exhalation which announces events with an unalterable truth, either through facts or through the words of some people.”38 In his view, the concept of prophecy embraces not only the words of prophets but also the typological events of history. Gregory the Great states that the essence of prophecy is that it reveals what is hidden, which does not necessarily lie in the future.39 Furthermore, prophecy did not come to an end with the Incarnation: there will be new prophets until the end of times. This is an idea we have encountered in Hildegard’s visions as well. Because prophecy is not necessarily directed towards future events, the prophet can take on other tasks besides predicting the future. This opens the door to a conception of the prophet as an inspired exegete. According to Bernard McGinn, from the fifth to the eleventh century, the role of prophet became institutionalised: the prophet was understood to be one who had the authority to interpret the biblical mysteries.40 We read in Raban Maur’s commentary on the first letter to the Corinthians that “There are two kinds of prophets: those who predict the future, and those who reveal the scriptures.”41 Similarly, for John Eriugena, the role of the prophet is taken up by the inspired theologian.42 Isidore includes two lists of the main types of prophet. They are loosely based on Augustine’s categorisation of visions in De Genesi, which means that the criterion of distinction is the mode of perception rather than the object or functionality. One categorisation is sevenfold: ecstasy, vision, dream, the voice of God sounding through a cloud, the same voice

37  Cf., “Quos gentilitas uates appellant, hos nostri prophetas uocant, quasi praefatores, quia porro fantur et de futuris uera praedicunt. Qui autem [a] nobis prophetae, in Veteri Testamento uidentes appellabantur, quia uidebant ea quae ceteri non uidebant, et praespiciebant quae in mysterio abscondita errant.”Isidore of Sevilla, Etymologiae, VII,8. 38  Cited in Meier, “Nova Verba Prophetae,” 73. 39  Meier, 77. 40  McGinn, “Prophetic Power in Early Medieval Christianity.” 41  Bernard McGinn, “Hildegard of Bingen as Visionary and Exegete,” in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld: Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongress zum 900jährigen Jubiläum, 13–19. September 1998, Bingen am Rhein, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Alexander Reverchon (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2000), 338. 42  Meier, “Nova Verba Prophetae,” 84; Christel Meier, “Eriugena im Nonnenkloster? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Prophetentum und Werkgestalt in den figmenta prophetica Hildegards von Bingen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 19 (1985): 466–97.

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sounding from the sky, parable, and being filled by the Holy Spirit.43 Alternatively, there are three kinds: prophecy with the eyes of the body, the spirit, or the mind. This is not the kind of categorisation that Hildegard makes. More important for understanding Hildegard’s statement is Raban Maur’s difference between the prophet who sees into the future and the prophet who exegetes. Hildegard’s categorisation includes three kinds of information: first, the medium through which the prophets come into contact with the divine; second, the kind of information they receive and communicate to others; and third, the way in which they communicate this information. The first kind of prophecy is received “through vision,” which, in opposition to the other two categories, suggests that there is a direct viewing of things received but not mediated by the mind. The other two categories are about prophecy that is spoken, while this one is about what is seen. The object of vision is the future, the most recognisable object of prophecy. There is no further mention of how this view of the future is communicated. There might be a link to Macrobius’ classification of dreams in his commentary on The Dream of Scipio.44 He mentions five kinds of dreams: somnium, visio, oraculum, insomnium, and visum.45 The two last ones are untrustworthy, but the first three have the quality of divination.46 In an oraculum, a person appears to the dreamer and predicts the future, whereas a visio shows what will happen. Lastly, a somnium also predicts the future but does so in an oblique way, so that interpretation is necessary. In other words: the last one is allegorical, the first two are not. The same distinction, I will argue, seems to be at play in Hildegard’s classification of prophetic forms. The second kind of prophecy is received “through wisdom,” when God’s omnipotence touches the mind. The focus here is on the way that the prophet communicates the knowledge she receives, namely “in signification.” This phrase is one that Hildegard often uses to describe her own allegorical method in the visions. For instance, she says that “this is shown in signification, so that, through it, He is recognised in faith who cannot  Isidore of Sevilla, Etymologiae, VII,8.   Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1963). 45  Macrobius, 8. 46  Macrobius, 10. 43 44

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be seen visibly with visible eyes.”47 “In significatione” can thus tentatively be translated as “allegorically,” and refers at least to the allegory of the visions. In Liber divinorum operum III,4,2, Hildegard uses roughly the same words to describe the signifying function of creation. I suggest that what is described here is also the object of seeing “through wisdom”: Omnipotens Deus, qui per sapientiam omnia condidit, mirifica opera sua diuersis significationibus aperit, atque in donis suis mirabilis existens ea unicuique creature secundum quod uult diuidit. Hominem quoque ad beatitudinem supernorum reducere uolens, ei in mirabilibus figuris hec que in celestibus et que in terrestribus et que in infernalibus mansionibus sunt prout uult congrue demonstrat. The almighty God, who has founded everything through wisdom, opens up his wonderful works with different significations, and, being marvelous in his gifts, divides them among all the creatures according to his wish. To humankind, which he wishes to bring back to the blessedness of heaven, he shows the things that are in the heavens and the things on earth and the things in the infernal regions, according to what he wishes and to what is right. [Emphasis added]48

The remarkable congruence of this passage with the passage about the three kinds of prophecy shows that the types of prophecy are rooted in a fundamental idea. The almighty God creates a creation that is structured by wisdom, so that it is opened up to human minds through the significations that are present in creatures and in humanity itself. This is the same idea that is expressed in our original passage where it is said that the prophets bring forth many and many things in signification, “ut etiam sapientia omnia edificauit [...].”49 “Edificare” means both to construct and to edify. The semantic plurality of this word suggests the idea that creation is at the same time ontological and epistemological. Signification is rooted in reality itself, and some prophets, those who see “in wisdom,” are able communicate this to others. Lastly, note that this kind of prophecy is connected to “aperire” and “proferre”: God opens up these significations to people, and people openly 47  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. Peter Dronke and Albert Derolez, CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), I,1,3. 48  Hildegard of Bingen, III,4,2. 49  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, II,30.

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communicate them to others. This stands in marked contrast to the third kind of prophecy, which is received “through knowledge,” in contrast to the second kind of prophecy “through wisdom.” It is received not when the omnipotence of God touches the mind, but when the word of God breathes into the knowledge of the prophet. The prophet then speaks obscure and hidden things, which I believe should be read in opposition to “in significatione,” and thus should be read as referring rather to the method than to the object of speaking. Furthermore, “to speak obscurely” or “to say hidden things” is a standard way of describing allegory. Thus, it seems that when Hildegard differentiates between these two last kinds of prophecy, the difference is between two kinds of allegory. One is mediated by wisdom and seems to be more directly related to truth and understanding, while the other is still obscure when it is spoken, because it utilises a different and more roundabout way of speaking. These two together stand in opposition to the direct view of the future that the first kind of prophets enjoy. Clarity, Obscurity, and Hildegard’s Prophetic Goals At first, this opposition would seem to refer to a topos in exegetical discourse, namely the opposition between speaking clearly in front of intellectual equals and speaking obscurely in front of the less educated. This is indeed something that we sometimes notice in Hildegard’s own exegetical discourse: when allegory is characterised as obscure, the stated reason is that human minds—or some human minds, or the mind of the recipient of the letter—are feeble. However, in the excerpt that I am discussing, the opposition is not as usual between allegory and non-allegory, but between two kinds of allegory. Alternatively, the opposition could at first seem to refer to the obscure truths of the Old Testament that are opened up by the Incarnation. Yet the order of appearance indicates otherwise, with “prophetia in significatione” coming first. I rather want to suggest that the opposition refers to two different kinds of allegorical prophetic speaking: one associated with clarity and one associated with (temporary) obscurity. Hildegard mostly associates allegory with clarity, with open signification, “in significatione.” Typically, she describes her own prophetic mission as an opening up of knowledge. For instance, the voice of God tells her in Scivias that she sees her visions allegorically “so that she would understand them more deeply and reveal them more openly.”50 When 50  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I,4,9. “Quod ut profundius, o homo, capias et apertius manifestes, uides […].”

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Hildegard talks about exegesis, prophecy, and knowledge, she makes use of this discourse. It is described by protectio and ostensio. The concept of adumbratio also belongs here, because a shadow is itself illumined. Another metaphor is that of the naked truth, for instance: “[…] the naked and open admonition of God in sacred Scripture, which the true son of God laid bare in its mystical signification, when he showed the inner sweetness of the kernel under the shell of the law.”51 This metaphor is used for the relation between the Old and the New Testament as well as for old-testament prophecy52 and Hildegard’s own prophetical calling: Hec autem uera sunt, et homini huic, que simplex in diuerticulis uerborum est, ueraciter ostensa sunt: quia Ego qui de superno Patre exiui, et de Matre uirginee uiriditatis carnem accepi, eandem hominem ad hoc excribraui, ut absque expolitis uerbis et sine humano magisterio prolatis hec denudaret, et ea absque umbraculis uerborum aperte proferret. These things are true, and they are shown in truth to this person, who speaks plainly, without verbal digressions. Because I, who have come from the heavenly Father and have received the flesh from a mother of virginal viridity, have sifted this person so that she would lay this bare without polished words and without human teaching, and so that she would speak of these things openly and without elaborate verbal covers. [Emphasis added]53

This excerpt rejects shadows and obscurity of two different kinds. One is of the human-made kind and refers to unnecessarily difficult ways of saying things. “Umbraculum” means the shade that is created by a cover of human making. Hildegard speaks “absque umbraculis uerborum” because she has not learned to polish her words (“absque expolitis uerbis”), and this is for the best, as this kind of words only seek to divert (“in diuerticulis uerborum”). The second kind of shadows that is rejected is the one that lay over the mysteries that Hildegard now “unveils” and “brings into the open.” The excerpt describes Hildegard’s exegesis of revelation as it was described earlier: a communicative act by God (“veraciter ostensa sunt”)  Hildegard of Bingen, III,9,28.  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, II,1,21.“Itaque uox illius qui omnibus dominatur super aquas, id est super prophetas, uenit, cum eis multa secreta tam celestia quam terrena denudauit […]”/“Therefore, his voice that dominates everyone comes over the waters, that is: over the prophets, when they lay bare many secrets from heaven as well as from earth.” 53  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber vite meritorum, VI,45. 51 52

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corresponds to an interpretive act by a human (Hildegard), who “reveals openly” what she now knows. However, Hildegard also uses the first and the third kind of prophecy. The first is obvious, because Hildegard talks about the future in each of her three books of visions. Each of them concludes with a vision of the end times. The third is more difficult, because we still do not know what it means to speak prophetically “through knowledge.” I think this kind of prophecy is closely linked to the narrative genre of the parable, a genre that may loosely be defined as a short allegorical narrative for didactic purposes. Remember that speaking “through knowledge” is connected in Hildegard’s scheme of prophetic types to Christ, the original narrator of parables. I will suggest that the difference with prophecy “through wisdom” is not only one of subject matter but also of audience. The parable is the genre that was used to speak to an unlearned public. The hidden and obscure things, then, do not only refer to the nature of the knowledge that is communicated, but to the way of communicating, which is opposed to saying things “in significatione.” It is hard to prove the point that prophecy “through knowledge” refers to parables, but I want to at least suggest it. The fact that parables would be seen as a kind of prophetic speaking is not strange. James Earl, who links both prophecy and parable to eschatological literature, says that they are closely related and states that “it was the prophets who first developed the parable as a genre.”54 Therefore, “[i]t would not be too much to say that the parable originates as a prophetic genre.”55 Ezekiel is even heard to say, “Lord, they are saying of me, ‘Isn’t he just telling parables?’”56 What we learn from Hildegard’s concise statement is that this kind of prophecy, which speaks in an obscure way, is different from what Hildegard considers to be the highest form of prophecy, which utters significations and to which she assimilates her own writing. There are a few instances in which this atypical discourse about obscure speaking returns, and in most of these cases the subject is parables. In a meditational text, edited as text 54  James W.  Earl, “Prophecy and Parable in Medieval Apocalyptic History,” Religion & Literature, 1999, 35. 55  Earl, 35–36. 56  Ezekiel 20, 49. Quoted in Earl. James Earl also says that the genre of the parable was “totally unknown” in the Middle Ages, but this is based on a misinterpretation of Stephen Wailes, who only meant to say that medieval exegetes did not distinguish parables as the object of exegesis from other biblical texts. Earl, 36; Stephen L. Wailes, Medieval Allegories of Jesus’ Parables (Berkeley: University of California press, 1987).

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389 of the letter collection, Hildegard says that Christ taught by the means of parables, which she calls “obscure words.”57 She stresses here that the divine mysteries are not open to all, and that there is no other way for people conceived in sin to hear the words of life.58 To a fellow abbess, Hildegard writes about her own writings in this way: Ego tibi dico quod numquam soleo in visione anime mee nudis verbis loqui, sed qualibus in ea doceor, et semper etiam aliqua similitudine, sicut scriptum est: “Aperiam in parabolis os meum, loquar propositiones ab initio.” Deus siquidem ab initio hominibus proposuit parabolas et similitudines, per quas plerumque conveniencius quam nudis verbis ad salutem instruuntur. And I say to you that I never have the habit of speaking with naked words in the vision of my soul, but with the kind of words that I am taught, and always with some kind of likeness, as it is written: “I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old.” In fact, God has related parables and likenesses to people from the beginning, through which they are taught the way of salvation much more easily than with naked words. [Emphasis added]59

This is a wholly different discourse than that of, for instance, the prologue of Liber vite meritorum and also than everything we saw of her exegetical theology. Could an explanation be found in the context of this statement? First, the letter is a response to a question that we cannot know because it was not included in the collection. The question seems to have been about a disorderly community and what to do with it, but also very concretely about a certain priest and a certain subprioress. The correspondent 57  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars tertia: CCLI–CCCXC, ed. Lieven Van Acker and Monika Klaes-Hachmöller, CCCM 91C (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 389 (p. 162). 58  Hildegard of Bingen, 389 (p. 153). “Botrorum autem optimum uinum suam dulcissimam doctrinam significat, qua homines in parabolis docebat, quia diuina mysteria generi per consilium serpentis obnubilato uidenda non sunt, nisi ut facies hominis in speculo, in quo tamen non est, resplendet. Quomodo enim posset uita a mortali homine uideri? Ipse enim obscura uerba hominibus locutus est, scilicet parabolas, quia in peccatis concepti uerba uite aliter capere non possent.”/“The best wine signifies his sweetest doctrine, with which he teaches people by means of parables, since the divine mysteries cannot generally be perceived, obscured as they are because of the snake’s advice, except in the way that people see their face in a mirror, although it is not actually in the mirror. How could life be perceived by a mortal person? Therefore, Jesus has spoken obscure words to people, namely in parables, because those who are conceived in sin cannot otherwise receive the words of life.” 59  Hildegard of Bingen, 268 (p. 18).

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seems to have specifically asked whether the priest was to be trusted or not. Hildegard does not go into this very specific question, which is more suited for a clairvoyant than a prophet. She answers that God has not shown her this information and then gives a general word of advice about how to deal with the situation. The opening paragraph quoted above, then, seems to be a warning about what one can reasonably expect from Hildegard and what not. The message seems to be that Hildegard’s visions are not about such particular matters. Second, in the context of the letters as a whole, this might give us a clue as to what is at play. The large public with which Hildegard is in conversation in these letters is interested in practical matters and their own lives. They ask Hildegard for advice and also, sometimes, for predictions of their futures. Hildegard does not often give straightforward answers: as she says, she often rather answers with small allegories and parables. The letters are not the right place to speak in a nuanced and conceptually rich way, or their recipients are not the right people. Therefore, I suggest, Hildegard harkens back to the usual integumental discourse in which allegory is dark and hidden, opposed to clear language, and used because it is more convenient to teach people this way (“couenientius […] instruuntur”), and she consistently uses the parable as an example of this. The psalm verse that she uses, however, is telling: “I will open my mouth with a parable,” which, an educated reader would know, is followed closely by “we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.”60 Certainly, part of the didactic aspect of exegetical discourse was always the idea that for most people gradual revelation under an obscure form is preferable.61 Different Kinds of Prophecy in Hildegard’s Works I suggest that we link the distinction between kinds of prophecy, corresponding to different kinds of allegory, to two kinds of allegorical form that Hildegard employs. On the one hand, there is the highly constrained, non-narrative, allegory of the visions. On the other hand, there is the free storytelling of the parables, at least in the letters. The difference between both is their closeness to their allegoresis. Hildegard never writes an  Psalms 78, 2–4.  Jean Périn, “Saint Augustin et la fonction protreptique de l’allégorie,” Recherches Augustiniennes et Patristiques, no. 1 (1958): 243–86. 60 61

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allegory without also writing its allegoresis. Even the simplest parable is explained. But the allegoresis does not always play the same role. In the case of the epistolary parables, the allegoresis accompanies the story for clarification. In the case of the visionary allegory, the allegoresis is a necessary part of the allegory, without which there is no understanding. Not only is the visionary allegory paralleled by its allegoresis in a word-for-­ word explication, its exegesis also points out the reasons for making the connections. In the parables, on the contrary, there is no particular reason for choosing a certain allegorical image apart from the fact that it offers a good didactic illustration. There is room for telling a story, and not everything must fit. The difference between the two forms is fittingly illustrated by the more difficult parables in the books of visions. Their narrative disintegrates under the strain of an interpretation that puts itself first. This indicates that the use of the different forms has much to do with the context in which they are used. The context of the vision text puts higher demands on the narrative kind of allegory, and this allegorical style even disappears in the later books of visions. Hildegard differentiates between different forms of allegory. Instead of the traditional distinction in allegorical discourse between the non-­ allegorical truth, allegorical truth, and allegorical nonsense, she opens up new divisions within the category of allegorical truth. Among her three kinds of prophecy, one is non-allegorical and two are allegorical (it goes without saying that none is nonsense). The difference between the two allegorical kinds of prophecy seems grounded not only in a difference of context and public but also in a generic and formal difference. On the one hand, there is the parable, in which the links between the two lines of reference are looser. On the other hand, there is the kind of allegory that we find in the visions, a kind which operates schematically via one-to-one correlations between meanings.

Cognition and Forms of Visionary Experience Hildegard’s work takes part in an epistemological shift from biblical hermeneutics to the interpretation of revealed wisdom by the individual. The focus shifts from Scripture and the world as sources of knowledge, to include the ways in which the individual produces knowledge. It is not only on how to read the words of a text but also on how words function in the mind and how revealed wisdom must be interpreted before it can

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function. Revelation is conceptualised as a process that takes place in the individual psyche and must therefore be repeated by every individual intellect. In this section, I will suggest that Hildegard applies these theoretical insights to the literary form of her visions. This is especially probable in view of the fact that no other medieval visionary so meticulously analyses her own experience.62 In turn, Hildegard’s own description of her experience has been subjected to thorough analysis. I will first read Augustine’s theory on visions and its influence on later theory and then discuss how scholars have applied this theory to Hildegard’s statements. I will then discuss how medieval theory about visionary experience grafted itself onto theories about the functioning of normal cognitive faculties, and connect this to Hildegard’s own focus on cognition. Augustine’s Theory of Vision Augustine ends his commentary on Genesis with a whole book investigating the concept of paradise. What and where is Adam and Eve’s paradise? The answer, he surmises, might be in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where Paul says: […] scio hominem in christo ante annos quattuordecim, siue in corpore nescio, siue extra corpus nescio, deus scit, raptum eius modi usque in tertium caelum. et scio eius modi hominem, siue in corpore siue extra corpus nescio, deus scit, quia raptus est in paradisum et audiuit ineffabilia uerba, quae non licet homini loqui. […] I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know— God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.63

62  She does this in the prologue to Scivias, the introduction to the third part of Scivias, the prologue to Liber divinorum operum, the letter to Guibert (Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI—CCLR, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), 103R (p. 261).), and in the autobiographical portions of her vita (Theodoric of Echternach, Vita sanctae Hildegardis, ed. M.  Klaes-Hachmöller (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993).) 63  Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, CSEL 28,1 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1894), XII,1. 2 Corinthians 12,2–4.

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There was never any doubt among interpreters that Paul was actually talking about himself here, and that he himself was taken to this third heaven, which is also paradise. Augustine’s question is: How it is possible that Paul did not know whether his experience took place inside or outside the body? In the course of his investigation, he discerns three kinds of vision. He says that when reading, for instance, the precept to love your neighbor as yourself, three ways of perceiving occur: first, through the eyes, which discerns the letters; second, through the spirit, which thinks of one’s neighbours; and third, through mental contemplation (“contuitus mentis”), which feels the love that one should feel towards one’s neighbour.64 The first kind of vision is that by which our eyes see everything that is before us.65 The second kind of vision is when we see the corporeal images (“corporales imagines”) of those things in our thoughts, whether these are real things that we recall from memory or fictional things that we invented.66 The third kind of vision does not see things corporeally, nor as images: it sees the things as they are (“proprie”).67 He calls these three kinds of visions corporale, spirituale, and intellectuale. Hildegard’s Visio Spiritualis/Intellectualis As Jean-Claude Schmitt points out, Hildegard’s experience is predominantly defined through what it is not.68 First of all, Hildegard declares herself unlearned, so the content of her visions cannot be her own. Second, she stresses the fact that she did not see her visions “in dreams, nor sleeping, nor in a frenzied state, nor with the eyes of the body or the ears of the outer person, nor in secluded places.”69 On the contrary, she received them “awake and alert, with a clear mind, with the eyes and ears of the inner person, in open places, according to God’s will.”70 It is important to  Augustine, XII,6.  Augustine, XII,6. 66  Augustine, XII,6. 67  Augustine, XII,6. 68  Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Hildegard von Bingen oder die Zurückweisung des Traums,” in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld. Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongreß zum 900jährigen Jubiläum, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2000), 353. 69  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, prologue. 70  Hildegard of Bingen, prologue. 64 65

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Hildegard to distance herself from notoriously untrustworthy forms of visionary experience: messages received through dreams or in bouts of madness could be prompted by the devil. Therefore, she stresses that she was not asleep but awake; also, she was “circumspecta,” watchful for any devilish tricks. Her mind was not in a frenzy but completely clear. Lastly, she was among other people, being watched. Later, in the prologue to Liber divinorum operum, she replaces “in phrenesi” by “in extasi.” “Extasis” is the word Augustine uses for the visions of Paul and Peter. It is the word with which Elisabeth of Schönau describes her experiences, and the word that contemporaries use to denote mostly positive paranormal experience (in opposition to “phrenesis”). In itself, it is not unreliable, but apparently it is absolutely not how Hildegard receives her visions. Schmitt leaves it at that: because of the richness of symbolic, theological, and prophetic interpretations, the exact circumstances in which the vision was received fade into the background.71 Bernard McGinn tries to fit Hildegard’s visionary mode into Augustine’s scheme.72 That Hildegard sees with her “inner eyes” and hears with her “inner ears” clearly places her in the category of spiritual vision. McGinn claims that “[h]owever original these showings may be, both in mode of reception and in their varied imagery, in the twelfth century they would have been recognized as fitting the broad description of Augustine’s visio spiritualis.”73 In fact, Hildegard once uses the term herself in Liber vite meritorum, although she mostly calls her visions “visio mystica.”74 McGinn continues by saying that Hildegard mentions another form of visio, however, one that is imageless and is described “in terms of its transformative effects on herself.”75 This vision does qualify as an Augustinian visio intellectualis, “that is, a direct and non-pictorial contact with divine truth.”76 The visionary describes both forms in the letter to Guibert of Gembloux in which she answers his question of how exactly she receives her visions. Guibert and his fellow monks suppose that she sees them either in dreams or in ecstasy, exactly that from which Hildegard was

 Schmitt, “Hildegard von Bingen oder die Zurückweisung des Traums,” 366.  McGinn, “Hildegard of Bingen as Visionary and Exegete.” 73  McGinn, 329. 74  McGinn, 329. 75  McGinn, 330. 76  McGinn, 330. 71 72

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trying to dissociate herself.77 So she explains that this is not the case. She says that from the time of her childhood up to the present, she “constantly enjoys the gift of this vision.”78 It is something that she constantly and uninterruptedly sees while awake, both night and day. She repeats that she does not hear with her bodily ears, nor in the thoughts of her heart, nor with any of her five senses, but only in her soul, while she remains capable of hearing with her outer ears.79 What does this first form of vision look like? It is light: a light from which the source cannot be seen, which is not restricted, but much more luminous than a cloud through which the sun shines. In the letter to Guibert, Hildegard calls this light “umbra viventis luminis,” the shadow of the living light. This light is always with her. It is the mirror in which she sees her visionary images. Clouds, shadows, and mirrors run parallel in Hildegard’s imagination: they are all means of perceiving a light that is actually imperceptible. They show us the forms of things that are perceptible, forms that reflect absolute truth just as mirrors reflect light. So, the light that is constantly present in Hildegard’s soul is the cloud, or mirror, or shadow, while the visionary images that she describes in her texts are the forms that become visible in that reflected light. A reflected light, to be sure, that is itself so bright that Hildegard cannot perceive its form, just as one cannot see the outline of the sun.80 There is yet another light, the “lux vivens” or living light, which appears “in eodem lumine” (i.e., in “umbra viventis luminis”), but only sometimes and infrequently. It is even more difficult for Hildegard to explain how she 77   Guibert of Gembloux, Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae: Quae in Codice B.R. BRUX. 5527–5534 Inveniuntur (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), 16–17. 78  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR, CCCIIIR. “Ab infantia autem mea, ossibus et neruis et uenis meis nondum confortatis, uisionis huius munere in anima mea usque ad presens tempus semper fruor, cum iam plus quam septuaginta annorum sim.”/“From my early childhood, when I was not yet fully grown in my bones, nerves, and veins, up to the present moment, when I am already over seventy, I constantly enjoy the present of this vision in my soul.” 79  Hildegard of Bingen, CCCIIIR. “Ista autem nec corporeis auribus audio nec cogitationibus cordis mei, nec ulla collatione sensuum meorum quinque percipio, sed tantum in anima mea, apertis exterioribus oculis, ita ut numquam in eis defectum extasis patiar; sed uigilanter die ac nocte illa uideo.”/“I hear these things not with the ears of my body nor with the thoughts of my heart, nor with anything gathered by my five senses, but only in my soul, with my outer eyes open, so that I never suffer the weakness of ecstacy; wide awake, I see them by day and by night.” 80  Hildegard of Bingen, CCCIIIR. “Huius quoque luminis formam nullo modo cognoscere ualeo, sicut nec spheram solis perfecte intueri possum.”/“In no way am I able to perceive the form of this light, just as I cannot look straight at the outline of the sun.”

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sees this light. All she can say is that when she looks at it, all sadness and pain are lifted from her memory, and she feels like a girl, not like the old woman she is.81 McGinn and Zátonyi classify this as an Augustinian visio intellectualis. They group it together with some other passages, most importantly this one from the prologue of Scivias: Factum est in millesimo centesimo quadragesimo primo Filii Dei Iesu Christi incarnationis anno, cum quadraginta duorum annorum septem que mensium essem, maximae coruscationis igneum lumen aperto caelo ueniens totum cerebrum meum transfudit et totum cor totumque pectus meum uelut flamma non tamen ardens sed calens ita inflammauit, ut sol rem aliquam calefacit super quam radios suos ponit. Et repente intellectum ­expositionis librorum, uidelicet psalterii, euangelii et aliorum catholicorum tam ueteris quam noui testamenti uoluminum sapiebam, non autem interpretationem uerborum textus eorum nec diuisionem syllabarum nec cognitionem casuum aut temporum habebam. [Emphasis added] It happened in the year 1141 after the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the son of God, when I was forty-two years and seven months old, that there came a fiery light flashing brightly out of the open sky and flooded my whole brain and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast, like a flame that does not burn but glows, just as the sun warms something on which it sets its rays. And suddenly I had an understanding of the exposition of books, namely of the Psalter, the Gospels, and the other orthodox volumes of both the old and the new testament. But I could not interpret the words of the text, I could not divide the syllables, and I knew nothing of the cases or tenses of the verbs.82

Bernard McGinn defines the visio intellectualis as “a direct and non-­ pictorial contact with divine truth,” a definition which fits both these passages because it is so broad.83 Zátonyi has a definition that is more in line 81  Hildegard of Bingen, CCCIIIR. “Et in eodem lumine aliam lucem, que lux uiuens mihi nominata est, interdum et non frequenter aspicio, quam nimirum quomodo uideam multo minus quam priorem proferre sufficio, atque interim dum illam intueor, omnis mihi tristitia omnis que dolor de memoria aufertur, ita ut tunc mores simplicis puelle, et non uetule mulieris habeam.”/“And in this light I sometimes but not often see another light, which is named (so I am told) the living light. I am even less able to speak about the way I perceive this light than the other one. Sometimes, when I look at it, all my sadness and pain are lifted from my memory, so that I feel like a simple girl and not an old woman.” 82  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, prologue. 83  McGinn, “Hildegard of Bingen as Visionary and Exegete,” 329.

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with Augustine. She calls the moment of understanding the visio intellectualis.84 This moment of understanding is connected to how Hildegard describes to Guibert the words she hears in her visions: they are not like human words, but “sicut flamma coruscans et ut nubes in aere puro mota [emphasis added]” (“like a flashing flame and like a cloud moving through a clear sky”).85 Zátonyi therefore identifies the Pentecostal revelation that Hildegard had when she was 42 years old, in the year 1140, with every time that she hears the voice of God explain the meanings of her visions to her. She also equates it with the infrequent flashes of the living light that bring relief of sadness. In the letter to Guibert, Hildegard tells about how she sometimes gets tired of writing down the words and the visions that are shown to her, because she suffers from constant sickness. However, when her soul discerns and feels the presence of the living light, her mood lightens, she forgets her pain, and her visions become a fountain of energy for her soul.86 I agree that it is reasonable to suppose that the two first experiences, the decisive moment of deep insight (“intellectus”) and all the following smaller moments of insight into the visions, are similar and could be assimilated to Augustine’s visio intellectualis. However, the manner in which the flashes of the living light are described is different. One difference is that Hildegard seems to maintain the distinction between lumen and lux: in the phrase “umbra viventis luminis” (“shadow of the living light”), the word for light is lumen, but in the phrase “lux vivens” (“living light”) itself, it is lux. It seems strange that the same living light would be referred to by two different words. I think that it might well be that the genitive “viventis luminis” is not a subjective but a descriptive genitive: not “the shadow of the living light,” but “the shadow made of living light.” In that case, the light that the visionary sees, “vivens lumen,” is a shadow in comparison to the second light, the lux in which it finds its origin, but because of that origin it also deserves to be called living. Hildegard thus clearly distinguishes between the two: lumen is the derivative of lux, which is the

 Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 207.  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR, 103R (p. 263). 86  Hildegard of Bingen, 103R (p. 263). 84 85

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source light.87 This is in line with the scholastic terminology for light, which is rooted in cosmology: lux is the first, incorporeal, form of light, from which originates lumen, the perceptible form of light.88 A second difference is that the shadow of living light conveys insight, both into Scripture and into visions, but the living light itself has the opposite effect: it erases some experiences from memory. It conveys a feeling of solace and of renewed energy. It has an effect on Hildegard’s emotional state, not on her intellectus. Whereas the visions that she sees in the shadow of living light allow her to acquire an understanding of “written and spoken words, virtues, and some human actions,” the perception of the living light gives her the strength to communicate that knowledge to others.89 Therefore, if intellectual insight is taken to be the touchstone to Augustine’s visio intellectualis, as Maura Zátonyi takes it to be—rightly, I believe—then the experience of the living light cannot be categorised as such. In sum, Hildegard describes three extraordinary experiences and four elements. Her visions provide her with images, insight, and inner strength. The images (1) are projected onto a sort of canvas, a cloud, shadow, or mirror: “umbra viventis luminis” (2). This light is a shadow in comparison to the “vivens lux,” the living light that sometimes peers through the clouds and affects Hildegard emotionally (3). Lastly, there is the fiery light like a flame, which imparts understanding, as well (at first) of the whole intellectual tradition as (later) of the visions (4). The images seen in the shadow of the living light could be described as a visio spiritualis, and the flashes of understanding certainly qualify as visio intellectualis. The experience of the living light is hard to categorise. 87  It is true that in her letters, she often uses phrases like “vivens lux dicit” for rhetorical effect, but she seems aware of the contradiction when she stresses in the letter to Guibert that it is in the shadow of the living light (“umbra viventis luminis”) that she sees what she says and from which she responds to her interlocutors when she says that she responds “from the splendor of the living light”: “Anima autem mea nulla hora caret prefato lumine quod umbra uiuentis luminis uocatur […] et in ipso uideo que frequenter loquor et que interrogantibus de fulgore uiuentis lucis respondeo.”/“My soul does not at any moment lack that light which is called the shadow of the living light […] and in this light I see the things that I frequently talk about and the things which I answer to inquirers in the brightness of the living light.” In the letters, Hildegard (and her secretaries) adapt the style to the addressee. A subtle phrase like “shadow of the living light” would not be understood by many, especially as very few people had actually read Scivias. 88  Klaus Hedwig, Sphaera lucis: Studien zur Intelligibilität des seienden im Kontext der mittelalterlichen Lichtspekulation (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980). 89  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR, 103R (p. 261).

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Augustine’s Cognitive Visions I propose to shift the focus away from these particular categories to the larger modes of thought that establish them. What is most interesting about Augustine’s way of categorising visions is how he equates visionary experience with modes of thought, because he thinks of thought through the metaphor of sight, and visions—as the name indicates—are usually discussed with regard to their visual aspect. For Augustine, a vision is or should be an intellectual experience. Therefore, his theory of visions is based on his sign theory, which describes how people interpret the world around them through their senses, mind, and thought.90 I think that this kind of thinking about visions would have been something that Hildegard was familiar with and something that could have influenced her in conceptualising the nature of her own experiences. First, let us look at the last book of Augustine’s Genesis commentary in more detail. The greatest problem with the interpretation of this text is that Augustine never distinguishes between normal and paranormal ways of seeing. In distinguishing his three categories of vision, Augustine only talks about the way in which all people see: through their eyes, through the mental images of those things that the eyes see, and through ‘in-sight’ into the concepts that those images represent. What we would call visionary experience is thus received in an unexceptional way. Still, these experiences are exceptional. What is it, then, that makes them exceptional? Although Augustine tries to answer this question through a nuanced argument, he never really succeeds in drawing a clear dividing line. It is characteristic of Augustine’s philosophy that it takes sign theory and a model of cognition and communication as the basis for various theoretical excursions: “Augustine’s thoughts on all these disparate issues— history, time, creation, knowledge, sense-perception, signs, language, and God—are connected, and the terminology and concepts which he uses in discussing them are the same.”91 The same goes for his theory of visions, which entails some remarkable consequences. For instance, the three categories of visions that he distinguishes are not only hierarchically but also 90  On Augustine’s theory of signs, see: Darrel B.  Jackson, “The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana,” Revue d’Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 15, no. 1–2 (1969): 9–50; Clifford Ando, “Augustine on Language,” Revue d’Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 40, no. 1 (1994): 45–78; Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 91  Ando, “Augustine on Language,” 48.

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sequentially ordered, because they are modelled on normal thinking. The corporeal vision cannot stand on its own: it always gives rise to an image in the spirit.92 If the person who perceives is consciously looking at something, this image is acknowledged and we find it in our soul. A rational soul will then forward that image to the intellectus. The same goes for a spiritual vision, when the seer sees images of things that are not before their corporeal eyes. This hierarchy of the visionary categories is often interpreted as meaning that the intellectual vision is better than the spiritual one, and the spiritual one better than the corporeal one. This is true, but not the whole truth, because the worth of every kind of vision eventually depends on understanding. The category of the corporeal vision is not exclusively corporeal; it merely starts with a corporeal experience. Every kind of vision becomes part of a thought process. The category to which it belongs is determined by the stage at which information enters the thought process: whether in corporeal form, as images in the spirit, or as pure intellection. The litmus test for knowing whether something is a real vision always resides in the last step, the intellectus. Here, it is important to note that a vision does not have to be interpreted by the one who sees it. For instance, King Balthasar saw the floating handwriting on the wall (the corporeal vision), but Daniel interpreted it (the intellectual vision), and therefore Daniel is the real prophet.93 So, for Augustine, a prophet is the one who can interpret a vision that is not necessarily their own. But interpretation is not exclusive to visionary experiences. Therefore, how can one know that what Balthasar saw was a vision? Or rather, because it is obvious that a floating hand scribbling on the wall is not an everyday occurrence, how does one know that it is a message from God? Augustine’s answer is that we know we are dealing with a vision when it is a sign that can be interpreted in a meaningful way, leading to insight.94 If the thing that is transmitted through the spiritual images to the intellect is a sign of something, then it is either understood by the interpreter (the prophet) or the intellect will start searching for its meaning. Somewhat later in the text, Augustine clarifies that if the images that are seen in the spiritual vision signify nothing, then they are just imaginations of the soul, such as people see when they are awake and running images through their  Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, XII,11,22 and XII,24,51.  Augustine, XII,11,23. 94  Augustine, XII,11,22. 92 93

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thoughts. However, if they do signify something, then it does not matter whether they are received asleep, awake, or in ecstasy; then “mirus modus est” (“it is a special kind of seeing”).95 So, people can be deceived by visions in their corporeal or spiritual form, but an intellectual vision never deceives: “si intellegit, continuo verum est” (“If one understands it, it is necessarily true”).96 This does not mean, however, as it is often interpreted, that corporeal and spiritual visions are less trustworthy than an intellectual vision; these categories do not exclude the intellectual vision: as long as they can be interpreted as signs, as long as they signify something, they become intellectual visions. This again leads to a further question. What is a sign for Augustine? In De doctrina christiana, he gives two definitions. In the definition found in the first book, signs are “things that are used to signify something else.”97 This definition looks at signs from the point of view of the sign itself. There are (1) things that are not signs, (2) things that are signs as well as things, and (3) things that are only signs, of which the most important are words.98 The second definition, which opens book two of De doctrina christiana, considers signs as “that aspect of a thing which is not its surface, which makes something come to mind other than that which is perceived by the senses.”99 This definition looks at the interpreter of signs. Here, Augustine gives another classification: signs can be natural or they can be given, that is, they can be intentional or not. Whether a sign is natural or given through communication, its cognitive effect is the same in both cases: it leads the thought to something other than itself. Examples of signs include the footprint of an animal, smoke, and the sound of a trumpet. Examples of signs accompanying the first definition are biblical things, such as Moses’ cane, Jacob’s stone, and Abraham’s ram. The array of signs is thus very broad: it encompasses everyday communication between people and between animals, everyday interpretation of the world around us, but also the interpretation of the Bible, and ultimately the

 Augustine, XII,11,26.  Augustine, XII,14,29. cf., XII.25.52: “At vero in illis intellectualibus visis non fallitur: aut enim intellegit, et verum est; aut si verum non est, non intellegit […]”/“But one cannot go wrong with these intellectual visions: either one understands, and it is true; or it is not true and one will not understand.” 97  Augustine, De doctrina christiana (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), I,2,2. 98  Augustine, I,2,2. 99  Augustine, II,1. 95 96

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whole universe.100 We are back at the same problem that Augustine’s analysis of the visions presented us with in the first place: this theory is so broad that it cannot indicate the specificity of biblical or visionary revelation. A final attempt to answer the first question brings us to the last question: How does Augustine distinguish biblical signs from all other signs? The answer is that there simply is no difference in form or character between divinely given and other signs. The difference, for Scripture as well as for visions, lies within the person, in their intellect. It is one of Augustine’s central beliefs that everyone has access to divine truths even without the mediation of Scripture (or visions, for that matter).101 What, then, is the role of Scripture? As Thomas Williams explains, “the written words of scripture are signs, and they help direct our mind’s eye to the realities they signify. […] We do not learn intelligible things from Moses or Paul or the Evangelists; we learn them by seeing them for ourselves in the eternal Truth. But the words of scripture are signs that direct our attention to what we could, but rarely ever would, see without them.”102 Therefore, there is no specific characteristic that distinguishes revelatory signs from other signs; what matters is the sort of insight they give. “What we learn from scripture is learned from Truth himself. And Truth is not past but present, always accessible. It is in intellectual ‘memory,’ where we see not the images of past realities that are now gone (as is the case with sense memory) but the present—in effect timeless—realities themselves.”103 The same seems to be true for the visions, which derive their value from their interpretation by the intellect. Intellectual visions are visions not because of any formal characteristic but because the one who receives them gains an exceptional understanding through them. In conclusion, visions are integrated into the broader framework of Augustine’s cognitive theory: visions are perception and thought, which work through signs. The apex of a vision is the understanding of its moral message on a more abstract plane: Augustine says that what is discerned in 100  Armand Strubel, “‘Allegoria in factis’ et “Allegoria in verbis,” Poétique, no. 23 (1975): 346. 101  Augustine, S. Aureli Augustini Confessiones (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1949), XII,15,18; Thomas Williams, “Biblical Interpretation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 63. 102  Williams, “Biblical Interpretation,” 65–66. 103  Williams, 63.

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this visio intellectualis are virtues, both those that we need in this life only and those that will stay with us in the afterlife.104 Although he stresses in De Genesi that visions are more likely to be truthful when they are received in ecstasy, Augustine never separates visions from normal experiences of intellectual insight.105 The Continuity Between Vision and Cognition in Medieval Texts Jesse Keskiaho has traced the reception of Augustine’s categories of vision in the early Middle Ages.106 The theory was relatively unknown before the eighth century, but especially in Francia “by the end of the century it had become the leading scholarly frame of reference for thinking about visionary phenomena, and played a role in intellectual pursuits from exegesis to theological polemics.”107 However, the theory was not always interpreted in the same way: a simplified version of its classification of visions was much more common than a discussion of its epistemological grounding of visions. Keskiaho attributes this to the exegetical contexts in which the theory was mainly received.108 There was a small learned elite who did emphasise the three categories of vision as “a general epistemological theory applicable to all human cognition” and who did highlight “the avisual nature of intellectual vision,” but they were a minority. One of them is Alcuin, who, in a letter to the monk Fridugis, summarily explains Augustine’s theory, while emphasising the difference between the spiritual and the intellectual vision.109 He complains that many people do not know the difference, although these three kinds of visions are common to all.110 A far more famous work, however, used Augustine’s text in a less-­ nuanced way: Isidore’s Etymologiae includes an excerpt of Augustine on  Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, XII,31,59.  Augustine, XII,13,27. 106  Jesse Keskiaho, Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Jesse Keskiaho, “The Handling and Interpretation of Dreams and Visions in Late Sixth-to-Eighth-century Gallic and Anglo-Latin Hagiography and Histories,” Early Medieval Europe 13, no. 3 (2005): 227–48. 107  Keskiaho, Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages, 138. 108  Keskiaho, 138. 109  Keskiaho, 190–92; Keskiaho, “The Handling and Interpretation of Dreams and Visions in Late Sixth-to-Eighth-century Gallic and Anglo-Latin Hagiography and Histories,” 244. 110  Keskiaho, Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages, 190–91.Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages, 190–91. 104 105

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visions in its treatment of prophets and prophecy.111 However, Keskiaho says, because “the epistemological dimension of the theory is excised, the enumeration of the three visions becomes a classification of paranormal experiences, rather than a theory of cognition.”112 The same trend is noticed by Andrew Kraebel, who looked at the use of Augustine’s categories in Ambrose Autpert’s, Anselm of Laon’s, and Richard of St Victor’s (ca. 1150s) commentaries on Revelation, in the introduction to his translation of Richard’s commentary.113 He observes that the “complexity and subtlety of Augustine’s system is simplified considerably in medieval exegetical writing on John’s Apocalypse.”114 The most significant revision that medieval commentators on the Apocalypse introduced is the equation of the visio corporalis with normal sight, while spiritual and intellectual vision become exclusive to prophets and visionaries.115 However, there are also texts that do not blot out the normal experience of spiritual and intellectual vision. An example is the dialogue of Honorius of Regensburg about “the order of discerning God in creation,” Scala Coeli Major, in which he describes the stairway to heaven using the categories of visio corporalis, spiritualis, and intellectualis.116 This stairway combines normal and paranormal experiences so that they form a natural continuum. There is also an interesting passage in the psychological treatise De spiritu et anima, attributed to Alcher of Clairvaux and probably written during the last quarter of the twelfth century. It stresses the fact that there is no difference in kind between natural and paranormal vision. The author even declares that he is much more amazed at the ability of the soul to produce images of what is seen through the eyes than by visions received during sleep, madness, or ecstasy.117 He further stresses that there is little  Isidore of Sevilla, Etymologiae, VII,8.  Keskiaho, Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages, 167. 113  Andrew Kraebel, “Richard of St. Victor on the Apocalypse of John (Selections),” in Interpretation of Scripture: Theory: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Andrew, Richard and Godfrey of St Victor, and of Robert Melun, ed. Franklin T.  Harkins and Frans Van Liere (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). 114  Kraebel, 333. 115  Kraebel, 334. 116  Honorius of Regensburg, Scala Coeli Maior, Patrologia Latina 172 (Paris: Migne, 1854). 117  Alcher of Clairvaux, De Spiritu et Anima, Patrologia Latina 40 (Paris: Migne, 1845), XXIV. “I am much more amazed and utterly astounded by the speed and ease with which the soul produces the images of bodies seen through the eyes of the body than by the visions of mad or sleeping or even ecstatic people.” 111 112

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to no difference between what is seen in dreams and what is thought while being awake.118 This stance has of course to do with the fact that the author is not writing exegesis but a treatise on how the soul functions. Here, we see the overlap of two cognitive systems, that of the vision and that of the soul, a merger which begins at the end of the eleventh century and characterises the twelfth. In conclusion, medieval writers mostly make use of Augustine’s text on visions as a way to categorise biblical visions in their exegesis. They therefore try to define the specificity of visionary, paranormal experiences. This in turn leads to mystagogical interpretations, where the visio intellectualis is exalted far above normal human understanding.119 Even so, it is clear that the epistemological theory behind it was not lost. On the contrary, the same writers who were seeking ways to define the specificity of visionary experiences stress the similarity with normal perception and cognition. For the medieval intelligentsia, at least until the end of the twelfth century, the vision remained an intellectual experience integrated into the theory and language of knowledge, cognition, and signs. Becoming a Prophet Returning to Hildegard, we have seen that she tries hard to dissociate her visions from the concept of the visio corporalis. Scholars generally agree that her visions should be characterised as visio spiritalis, because they are pictorial, and that the moment of understanding is an example of visio intellectualis. I propose a shift of viewpoint by looking at the prophetic rather than the personal aspect of the visionary experience. The narrative stimulus of the prologue is Hildegard’s calling as a prophet. God calls her three times. The first time, God commands her to say and write what she sees and hears. Simultaneously or as a reaction to this command, Hildegard receives the visio intellectualis. Et repente intellectum expositionis librorum, uidelicet psalterii, euangelii et  aliorum catholicorum tam ueteris quam noui testamenti uoluminum sapiebam […].  Alcher of Clairvaux, XXIV.  Cf., Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80, no. 1 (2005): 10–13. Newman notes the mystical tendencies in Alcher of Clairvaux’s and Gerard of Grandmont’s uses of Augustine. 118 119

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And suddenly I had an understanding of the exposition of books, namely of the Psalter, the Gospels, and the other orthodox volumes of both the Old and the New Testament […].120

This very concrete description of what the visionary revelation contains already qualifies the mode of the vision, putting it squarely in the tradition of exegesis. The sudden experience of profound insight that the visionary describes is not about the understanding of virtues or divine realities, but about the knowledge of books. It could also, I want to suggest, be about the skill of doing exegesis, when we put the stress in “intellectum expositionis librorum” on “expositio” and not on “librorum.”121 The sentence could mean that Hildegard suddenly understands the mysteries that expositions of these books reveal; but it could also mean that she suddenly understands how such exposition works. Another qualification follows, when Hildegard explains that she has been having visions since she was a child. These are usually categorised as visiones spirituales. These are the visions that she does not see while sleeping or in ecstasy, but while awake, and not with the outer but the inner senses. This brings to mind Augustine’s theory of visions, because Hildegard could do nothing with these visions while she lacked understanding of them and did not know how to communicate them: Virtutem autem et mysterium secretarum et admirandarum uisionum a puellari aetate, scilicet a tempore illo cum quinquennis essem usque ad praesens tempus mirabili modo in me senseram sicut et adhuc; quod tamen nulli hominum exceptis quibusdam paucis et religiosis qui in eadem conuersatione uiuebant, qua et ego eram, manifestaui; sed interim usque ad id temporis cum illud Deus sua gratia manifestari uoluit, sub quieto silentio depressi. I have felt the force and the mystery of secret and amazing visions in me from a young age, namely from that time when I was five years old until the present and in the same wonderful way as in this very moment. But I never disclosed this to anyone except to a few people who lived in the same community as me. In the meantime, however, up until the moment when God wanted to make this known through his grace, I was weighed down by a quiet silence.122

 Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, prologue.  Hildegard of Bingen, prologue. 122  Hildegard of Bingen, prologue. 120 121

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Hildegard did not become a prophet by having visions, but only at the moment that she both understood them and was able to communicate them to others. As Augustine says, the prophet is rather the one who interprets for the benefit of others than the one who sees. Even if seeing and interpreting are done by the same person, what is seen is still useless without the insight into its meaning. Next in the prologue, God calls Hildegard again. The prophet recounts how she was afraid for a long time to obey the divine command. It was only when she found two people whom she could trust—her secretary Volmar and one of her nuns—that she began writing. At the end of the prologue, God calls a final time, and then the description of the first vision begins. We see that the characterisation of the mode of visions is actually a minor point in this narrative. The main topic is the making of a prophet-­ exegete. Revealed images and texts alone do not suffice; the prophet-­ exegete needs to receive insight into the commentary tradition and the method of exegesis and needs a community that will support them and, of course, listen to them. I therefore conclude that the prologue talks not only about the author’s visionary experience but also about how understanding can possibly be transferred from the prophet to the public, or from the author to the reader. The Prophet and the Reader Let me sum up the findings of this chapter. The first observation is that the visions talk about the problem of deeper signification, or allegory and allegoresis, not in relation to either of the two as a given repository of knowledge, but with regard to the transfer between them in the mind of the individual. Second, the visions talk about allegory and allegoresis in history, again, not in relation of either of the two as a given tradition of texts, but with regard to the transfer between them by the interpreter and with regard to the role of the prophet in providing both allegory and allegoresis. Third, visionary experience was commonly located on a continuum with normal cognitive experience, with a strong focus on the result of both, which is understanding. Fourth, when Hildegard talks about her own visionary experience, she puts the emphasis on the problem of how to share her special insight. There seem to be two sides to this problem: to find a form and to find a public. All of these issues line up to paint the picture of the intellectual and formal design of the books of visions. The transfers between paranormal and

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normal, revelation and cognition, tradition and interpretation, allegory and allegoresis are actualised in the transfer between the prophet and the reader. Hildegard seems preoccupied with the possibility of the transfer itself. If the prophet’s vision is only valuable when it includes understanding, then this is also true for the reader. But can there be a continuity between the vision and cognition? Can the prophet pass on her insight to the reader? I propose that the vision texts attempt to enable this transfer by imitating the forms of cognition.123 So, while the initial visio spiritualis and intellectualis belong to Hildegard, the text would describe the visio spiritualis in another form, a form in which it can be thought by the readers, so that the readers can reach understanding in their own minds. The cognitive process that is described, then, is not that of Hildegard, but that of the reader. Hildegard’s text is the meeting place of two acts of cognition: that of Hildegard, who has received the grace of understanding divine mysteries, and that of the reader, who is guided by Hildegard towards the same insights, but who is setting out from the opposite direction. The visionary understands divine mysteries through a special act of grace, whereas her reader goes through the normal process of cognition from names to deeds. The structure of the vision text is as follows124: ( 0) Hildegard introduces herself and describes her experience. (1) She describes what she has seen: the content of her vision. (2) She describes what she has heard: the voice of God explaining the vision. (3) She describes what she has heard: the voice of God expanding certain philosophical-theological issues, exegeting the bible, giving moral precepts, and issuing warnings. I propose that Hildegard’s own experience (at level 0) is something that cannot be captured by the text and thus what remains outside the text. It is referenced but not described. Levels 1 to 3 are then not so much a recounting of that experience as the construction of another cognitive process, of how this understanding could also be reached, with the persona of Hildegard the visionary as a stand-in for the reader. 123  My argument here is similar to and inspired by that in James Simpson, Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Cambridge: Cambridge university press, 1995). 124  Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 218–19.

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This construction of a cognitive process takes as its starting point the textualisation or verbalisation of Hildegard’s insights. Hildegard’s actual experience seems to be of a transcendent nature that does not fit in her epistemological model.125 In the prologue to the third part of Scivias, Hildegard asks God for understanding (intellectus) so that she would be able to communicate what she has experienced in a way that is understandable to others as well: “Rogo te, mi Domine, ut mihi des intellectum, quatenus possim enarrabiliter proferre haec mystica” (“I ask you, Lord, that you give me understanding, so that I can speak about these mysteries in an expository way”).126 Hildegard searches for a way to communicate her understanding, which is not possible in the form in which she received it. This sentence indicates that Hildegard’s account is not an exact report of what she saw and heard: her insights first had to be translated into an intelligible form. “Scribe quae uides et audis” (“Write what you see and hear”) does not mean that Hildegard takes dictation, but that she “writes as she has learned” (“scribe ea hoc modo edocta”),127 that she “writes out of her true understanding of the creator” (“Nunc scribe de uera agnitione creatoris”),128 and “according to God” (“Scribe ergo secundum me in modum hunc”).129 After all, the words of God are not the same as those that humans speak: “And the words which I see and hear in this vision are not like the words which sound from human mouths, but like a flashing flame and like a cloud moving through a clear sky.”130 This would then be the importance of receiving insight into the “expositio librorum” (“the explanation of books”): only at the moment when Hildegard understood how exegesis works did she find the right form in which to write down her visions. The reality of her experience, however, does not fit any textual format, if only because it is not sequential: “And simultaneously I see and I hear and I know, and seemingly in the same moment I teach what I know.”131 A further reason is that it is transcendent: Hildegard sees “in the heavens” and hears the voice of God, although she also denies any ecstasy, saying that she sees “in her soul,” “with the eyes and ears of the inner person,” and “purely in the mind.” This kind of  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, prologue.  Hildegard of Bingen, III,1. 127  Hildegard of Bingen, prologue. 128  Hildegard of Bingen, III,1. 129  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,1.Liber divinorum operum, I.1. 130  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR, 103R (p. 262). 131  Hildegard of Bingen, 103R (p. 262). 125 126

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experience cannot be shared with others, because it is not and cannot be verbal. But understanding, according to Hildegard, is usually reached by means of words. If the wants the images that she sees to lead to understanding in others as well, they will have to take another form. So, the vision that is represented in the text would already be the result of Hildegard’s thinking and finding a fitting form, a textual form, which corresponds to her textual epistemology. This form is verbal allegory explained via textual exegesis. The reader can reach the divine mysteries that Hildegard understands through an act of grace via a normal process of cognition. Hildegard provides an ideal starting point by representing these mysteries allegorically. She is able to write allegories that optimally correspond to reality and its links to divine mysteries, supposedly through the right choice of “nomina.” She abstracts and reorders the elements of reality to make thinking easier. This is where the reader’s cognitive process begins. This is the process that we encountered in Hildegard’s theology of exegesis. The prophet, who receives insight through divinely revealed exegesis, has to find a way to let others share the insight. The whole history of revelation is made up of subsequent acts of interpretation. While the original one is directly inspired, the ones that follow need a text that is able to transfer this moment of insight. Why not, then, let the text describe the interpretive moment itself? I believe that this is what the vision texts do.

References Alcher of Clairvaux. 1845. De Spiritu et Anima. Patrologia Latina 40. Paris: Migne. Ando, Clifford. 1994. Augustine on Language. Revue d’Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 40 (1): 45–78. Augustine. 1894. De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim. Edited by Joseph Zycha. CSEL 28,1. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ———. 1949. S.  Aureli Augustini Confessiones. Edited by Paul Hanschke. Paderborn: Schöningh. ———. 1995. De doctrina christiana. Edited by Roger P.H.  Green. Oxford: Clarendon. Châtillon, Jean. 1984. La bible dans les écoles du XIIe siècle. In Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, ed. Guy Lobrichon and Pierre Riché, 163–197. Paris: Beauchesne. Chávez Alvarez, Fabio. 1991. ‘Die brennende Vernunft’: Studien zur Semantik der ‘rationalitas’ bei Hildegard von Bingen. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Earl, James W. 1999. Prophecy and Parable in Medieval Apocalyptic History. Religion & Literature 31 (1): 25–45.

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Guibert of Gembloux. 1998. Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae: Quae in Codice B.R.  BRUX. 5527–5534 Inveniuntur. Edited by Albert Derolez, Eligius Dekkers and Roland Demeulenaere. Turnhout: Brepols. Hedwig, Klaus. 1980. Sphaera lucis: Studien zur Intelligibilität des seienden im Kontext der mittelalterlichen Lichtspekulation. Münster: Aschendorff. Hildegard of Bingen. 1978. Scivias. Edited by Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 43. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1991. Epistolarium. Pars prima: I–XC. Edited by Lieven Van Acker. CCCM 91A. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1993. Epistolarium. Pars secunda: XCI–CCLR. Edited by Lieven Van Acker. CCCM 91B. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1995. Liber vite meritorum. Edited by Angela Carlevaris. CCCM 90. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 1996. Liber divinorum operum. Edited by Peter Dronke and Albert Derolez. CCCM 92. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2001. Epistolarium. Pars tertia: CCLI-CCCXC. Edited by Lieven Van Acker and Monika Klaes-Hachmöller. CCCM 91C. Turnhout: Brepols. Honorius of Regensburg. 1854. Scala Coeli Maior. Patrologia Latina 172. Paris: Migne. Hugh of Saint Victor. 1939. Didascalicon de studio legendi. Edited by Charles Henry Buttimer. Washington: The Catholic University Press. Hvidt, Niels Christian. 2007. Christian Prophecy—The Post-Biblical Tradition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Isidore of Sevilla. 1911. Etymologiae. Edited by W. M. Lindsay. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon. Jackson, Darrel B. 1969. The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana. Revue d’Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 15 (1–2): 9–50. Keskiaho, Jesse. 2005. The Handling and Interpretation of Dreams and Visions in Late Sixth-to-Eighth-Century Gallic and Anglo-Latin Hagiography and Histories. Early Medieval Europe 13 (3): 227–248. ———. 2015. Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kraebel, Andrew. 2013. Richard of St. Victor on the Apocalypse of John (Selections). In Interpretation of Scripture: Theory: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Andrew, Richard and Godfrey of St Victor, and of Robert Melun, ed. Franklin T. Harkins and Frans Van Liere. Turnhout: Brepols. Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius. 1963. Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis. Leipzig: Teubner. McGinn, Bernard. 1996. Prophetic Power in Early Medieval Christianity. Cristianesimo Nella Storia 17: 251–269. ———. 2000. Hildegard of Bingen as Visionary and Exegete. In Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld: Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongress zum 900jährigen Jubiläum, 13–19. September 1998, Bingen am Rhein, ed.

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Alfred Haverkamp and Alexander Reverchon, 321–350. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Meier, Christel. 1972. Die Bedeutung der Farben im Werk Hildegards von Bingen. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 6: 245–355. ———. 1985. Eriugena im Nonnenkloster? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Prophetentum und Werkgestalt in den figmenta prophetica Hildegards von Bingen. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 19: 466–497. ———. 2014. Nova Verba Prophetae: Evaluation und Reproduktion der prophetischen Rede der Bibel im Mittelalter. In Prophetie und Autorschaft : Charisma, Heilsversprechen und Gefährdung, ed. Christel Meier and Martina Wagner-­ Egelhaaf. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Newman, Barbara. 2005. What Did It Mean to Say “I Saw”? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture. Speculum 80 (1): 1–43. Périn, Jean. 1958. Saint Augustin et la fonction protreptique de l’allégorie. Recherches Augustiniennes et Patristiques 1: 243–286. Raban, Maur. 1851. De Rerum Naturis. Patrologia Latina 111. Paris: Migne. Ruge, Susanne. 2014. The Theology of Repentance: Observations on the Liber Vite Meritorum. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra L. Stoud, and George Ferzoco, 221–248. Leiden: Brill. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. 2000. Hildegard von Bingen oder die Zurückweisung des Traums. In Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld. Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongreß zum 900jährigen Jubiläum, ed. Alfred Haverkamp, 351–373. Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern. Simpson, James. 1995. Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Lesley. 1996. What Was the Bible in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries? In Neue Richtungen in Der Hoch- Und Spätmittelalterlichen Bibelexegese, ed. Robert E. Lerner and Luckner Müller. München: Oldenbourg. Strubel, Armand. 1975. ‘Allegoria in factis’ et ‘Allegoria in verbis.’  Poétique 23: 342–357. Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzmann. 2001. The Cambridge Companion to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Theodoric of Echternach. 1993. Vita sanctae Hildegardis. Edited by M.  Klaes-­ Hachmöller. Turnhout: Brepols. Wailes, Stephen L. 1987. Medieval Allegories of Jesus’ Parables. Berkeley: University of California Press. Williams, Thomas. 2001. Biblical Interpretation. In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, 59–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zátonyi, Maura. 2012. Vidi et intellexi: die Schrifthermeneutik in der Visionstrilogie Hildegards von Bingen. Münster: Aschendorff.

CHAPTER 8

Beliefs about Language and the Construction of Allegorical Form

Henri de Lubac’s monumental work on medieval exegesis sought to counter the negative attitude that holds allegorical exegesis to be arbitrary and ahistorical. He did this by laying bare the ideological groundwork that supports the practice of biblical allegoresis. His complaint was directed both against those who disassemble the procedure of allegoresis only to deride its arbitrariness and against those who study the meanings that allegoresis creates apart from the exegetical process producing those meanings: Whether it be to denounce their arbitrariness and archaic character, or, more rarely, to justify them, there is almost always an interest in the methods of ancient exegesis. Its machinery is taken to pieces and its sources are catalogued, but there are no precise questions about the establishment of its methods and what service these methods are meant to perform. Or else we find that the variety of its content is described without any attempt to find the principle which confers true significance on these thousands of details,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5_8

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the principle which establishes and proportions their objectivity, and which assures that they are linked to each other.1

By dissolving the allegoresis into many small parts, scholarship had neglected to observe the great synthesis that is always present as a backdrop to this exegesis, namely the theology of history that links all four levels of exegesis and provides language with the capacity to allegorise and be exegeted.2 Instead of explicating by disassembling, de Lubac argued, the exegete must observe the totality and the meaningfulness of the exegetical effort. This book has similarly tried to “disassemble the mechanism” and “search for the principles” behind Hildegard’s visionary allegory. In my view, the particular mechanism of Hildegard’s visions is not just generally an instance of allegory and allegoresis, but is directly linked to reflections on allegory and beliefs about language. I think we can associate them with a specific set of principles and that they not merely reflect these principles but produce a particular form in order to evoke them. Thus, Hildegard adapts the visionary tradition of the biblical prophets but transformed it for her own purposes and in line with intellectual trends in her own time. The allegorical form of Hildegard’s visions is a collage of personifications, shapes, colours, and various other elements loosely situated in spatial or agentive relations to each other. There is movement but no sustained narrative. The visions oscillate between what Elizabeth Salter called “diagrammatic” and “non-visual” allegory.3 On the one hand, the separate elements of the allegory are often arranged as “static, precise, and formalized” diagrams. On the other hand, there are always moments where “the

1  Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’écriture (Paris: Aubier, 1959), 356. Translation taken from Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Sebanc, Mark (Grand Rapids, Mich.; Edinburgh: Eerdmans; T. & T. Clark, 1998), 261–62. “Que ce soit pour en dénoncer l’arbitraire et le caractère archaïque ou, plus rarement, pour les justifier, on s’attache presque toujours aux procédés de l’exégèse ancienne, on en démonte le mécanisme, on en inventorie les sources, sans se demander de manière précise au service de quoi ces procédés sont mis en œuvre; ou bien encore on décrit la variété de son contenu, sans chercher le principe qui confère à ces mille détails leur signification véritable, qui en fonde et en dose l’objectivité et qui en assure le lien.” de Lubac, 261–62. 2  de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 356. 3  Elizabeth Salter, English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art, and Patronage of Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 121–22.

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eye is refused any help: the details do not build up into a logically and visually acceptable whole, but are isolated symbolic features.”4 Everything suggests that the vision is allegory, but it only becomes possible to read allegorically by means of the allegoresis. The allegoresis provides a point of reference, and then, projecting back from this interpretation, the loose collage turns into an impossibly tight structure of polysemy that is continued word by word. Allegorical structure is broken down and rearranged within the structure of exegesis. The method used to establish this result is that of a word-by-word transposition from the literal reference of a word via its semantic properties to the figural reference of the word. The word “mechanism” is actually not a bad fit for Hildegard’s allegories, because of the tight structural organisation that governs it. The principles behind this structure shine through in Hildegard’s homiletic exegesis of the Gospels. While reading the gospel texts as allegory, the exegesis treats the text as if every element of it is allegorical and corresponds to the level of reference that the exegesis projects. The narrative of the scriptural text is discarded in favour of the projected narrative, which the exegesis builds anew with the exact words of Scripture. But if allegory is held to the demand of perfect referentiality, in the end what is needed is not an allegorical commentary but a new allegorical text. Only a text designed as an allegory from the start can accommodate a perfect allegorical interpretation. What are the beliefs underlying this peculiar allegorical form? Allegory is a highly formalised and theorised literary form. It works with language but also with the ideas that people have about language. What allegory does with language is sustained by theories about the symbolising power of language. I have argued that we can draw connections between the forms of allegory and allegoresis used by Hildegard and the shape of her ideas. I have pointed out the analogy between the movements of revelation and interpretation (on the level of history), perception and cognition (on the level of the individual), and allegory and allegoresis in the visions. I have shown how the single word with its properties acts as the basic unit of meaning both in Hildegard’s theory of cognition and in the functioning of the allegory and allegoresis. In this last chapter, I want to broaden the analysis of this interrelation between allegorical form and theory to contemporary developments in biblical exegesis and the theory of language. At the time when Hildegard  Salter, 121–22.

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composes her allegorical visions, allegory and allegoresis are part of various contested cultural domains. For instance, there is the renewed emphasis in biblical exegesis on keeping ‘excessive allegorisations’ of Scripture in check by taking literal exegesis as the basis for allegoresis. Further, at the same time that allegorical exegesis is applied to non-biblical texts, there is some contention over the question whether ‘veiled’ language can produce legitimate knowledge. In this chapter, I want to show how the allegory and allegoresis of the visions might be seen as participating in or reacting to these developments.

Allegorical Visions and Scripture As the prologue to Scivias recounts, Hildegard the visionary becomes a prophet at the moment when she receives “intellectum expositionis librorum” (“the understanding of the explanation of books”).5 Exegetical understanding marks the moment when she must communicate her visions to the world. In an autobiographical passage of her vita, written much later than Scivias, Hildegard names the two elements that convinced her earliest readers of her prophetic gift: the fact that she was able to exegete the writings of others while possessing only a basic level of literacy, and the fact that she could compose and sing music without any knowledge of notation or composition.6 Later in the vita, Hildegard recounts how a similar experience lay at the basis of the Liber divinorum operum as well. She describes a vision in which she experiences being inspired with knowledge just as John the evangelist was inspired when he wrote “in the beginning was the Word.”7 The knowledge she receives is exactly the insight into John’s words: “This vision taught me all the writings and the words of this Gospel, which is about the beginning of the work of God, and made me explain them.”8 This exegesis is the beginning of a new book: “And I saw that this explanation must become the beginning of another text which was not yet revealed, and which should deal with inquiries after the creatures of the divine mystery.”9 Liber divinorum operum indeed 5  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkotter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), prologue. 6  Theodoric of Echternach, Vita sanctae Hildegardis, ed. M. Klaes-Hachmöller (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), II,1. 7  Theodoric of Echternach, II,16. 8  Theodoric of Echternach, II,16. 9  Theodoric of Echternach, II,16.

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contains an exegesis on John’s prologue, and can be read as a treatise on the subject of that prologue. Thus, Hildegard claims that both Scivias and Liber divinorum operum originated with the exegetical understanding of other works. The Scivias prologue raises the expectation of a book that explains Scripture. What follows, however, is not a Bible commentary. Maura Zátonyi took this thwarted expectation as the starting point for her research on the biblical hermeneutics of the visions. According to her, Hildegard’s texts offer a meta-commentary, which conveys knowledge of Scripture through a process of alienation and reappropriation. The visions adopt the Bible’s metaphorical way of speaking and rearrange its metaphors in new constellations. Through this alienation, people will learn to interpret the imagery anew, a skill that has been lost. The allegoresis of the visions then shows how this interpretation should proceed. In short, the hermeneutical achievement of Hildegard’s work is the redescription of biblical reality.10 As I explained earlier, my own hypothesis is close to Zátonyi’s but also differs from it in some respects, due to the different focus of my analysis. I have chosen to broaden and change the focus from hermeneutics to epistemology, and from allegorical discourse to allegorical form. Let me adduce a second passage from Scivias to demonstrate the difference. In the eleventh vision, God tells about the last stages of time. In the last stage that we are in, everything that had to be done has actually been done: the prophets have spoken, the Son has carried out the Father’s will on earth, and the Gospel’s message has been preached. But now the catholic faith has begun to weaken and the Gospel is not understood as it was before. No one puts in the effort anymore of reading the great exegetical commentaries with the care they deserve, and “the life-giving food of the divine scriptures has become tepid.”11 This is the reason for Hildegard’s prophetical mission, God says:

10  Maura Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi: die Schrifthermeneutik in der Visionstrilogie Hildegards von Bingen (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012), 307. 11  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 1978, III,11,18. “Sed nunc catholica fides in populis uacillat et euangelium in eisdem hominibus claudicat, fortissima etiam uolumina quae probatissimi doctores multo studio enucleauerant in turpi taedio diffluunt et cibus uitae diuinarum Scripturarum iam tepefactus est.”/“But now the catholic faith is waning in the people and knowledge of the Gospel wavers in them. The strongest books, which were explained by the most esteemed intellectuals with much care, are now dissolving in aversion, and the lifegiving food of the divine scriptures has become tepid.”

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[…] unde nunc loquor per non loquentem hominem de Scripturis, nec edoctum de terreno magistro, sed ego qui sum dico per eum noua secreta et multa mystica quae hactenus in uoluminibus latuerunt, uelut homo facit qui limum sibi primum componit et deinde ex eo quasque formas secundum uoluntatem suam discernit. […] therefore, I speak now through a person who does not speak from Scripture and is not educated by an earthly teacher. I who am speak through this person of new secrets and many mystical things which have until now been hidden in the books, as a person does who first gathers some clay and then models the forms out of it that they want.12

Hildegard is characterised in two ways: she is not educated by an earthly teacher, and she “does not speak from Scripture.” This “non loquentem […] de Scripturis” is very strangely phrased. The translation by Columba Hart and Jane Bishop makes of it “who is not eloquent in the Scriptures,”13 but this seems more a projection of what we think should be there than an accurate representation of the Latin. In my opinion, the next sentence gives a clue as to what is at stake. This sentence states that through Hildegard, God aims to reveal new secrets as well as mysteries that have not yet been discovered in the old books. This means that Hildegard cannot be speaking “de Scripturis” as either through or about Scripture; rather, she brings new revelations and so is continuing Scripture. This act is compared to that of forming figures out of clay, which is an interesting comparison, because it is usually applied to the act of creation. Christel Meier has rightly pointed out that Hildegard’s concept of the prophet cannot be simply assimilated to that of the Old Testament prophets, nor to that of the inspired apostles, other medieval visionaries, or to the idea of inspired authorship.14 Hildegard’s post-incarnation prophet, Meier claims, is the interpreter of Scripture and the cosmos, the theologian. According to Meier, Hildegard looked for inspiration in John Eriugena’s concept of the propheta theologus, the prophet-theologian. The idea that the prophet is a hermeneutic mediator as much as someone who foretells the future was a development of the early Middle Ages and a  Hildegard of Bingen, III,11,18.  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990). 14   Christel Meier, “Eriugena im Nonnenkloster? Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Prophetentum und Werkgestalt in den figmenta prophetica Hildegards von Bingen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 19 (1985): 466–97. 12 13

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common idea in the twelfth century, although this was also the time when the concept of the prophet began to change again.15 However, as my analysis in the previous chapter has shown, when Hildegard talks about prophecy, she is mostly concerned with the way in which the prophet brings new revelations. When she distinguishes several categories of prophecy, she does so on the basis of their mode of speaking: to speak directly about the future is different from speaking allegorically “by means of significations,” which is again different from speaking allegorically in a more obscure way. This preoccupation with forms of allegory indicates that the prophet is not primarily concerned with the interpretation of existing allegories but with the creation of new ones. This is why I believe that we should not just read the visions as a meta-­ commentary on Scripture. The visions are a commentary, but they also offer new revelations. Furthermore, Hildegard adds a third element: the prophet teaches not only the content of old and new revelations but also the method of interpretation. Salvation history, to Hildegard, is a slowly revolving process in which revelation is interpreted again and again. The prophet acts as the motor of this process by providing new revelations in allegorical form and by teaching how to interpret them by means of the exegetical method. The comparison with the clay being made into different shapes seems to reflect this method: the prophet reveals new secrets and old mysteries by composing new allegories and extracting meaning from its shapes. The part about the artist who models new forms out of clay could in this respect refer both to the making of allegorical form and to the discerning of exegetical meaning. Of course, in Hildegard’s allegorical method, these occur at the same moment. Just as the clay figure is moulded according to what the artist wants it to depict, so the allegory is shaped according to what the prophet wants it to signify. As Fabio Chávez Alvarez has pointed out in his study on rationality in the books of visions, Hildegard does not view prophecy as a completed

15  Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi; Bernard McGinn, “Prophetic Power in Early Medieval Christianity,” Cristianesimo Nella Storia 17 (1996): 251–69; Bernard McGinn, “Hildegard of Bingen as Visionary and Exegete,” in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld: Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongress zum 900jährigen Jubiläum, 13.-19. September 1998, Bingen am Rhein, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Alexander Reverchon (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2000), 321–50; Meier, “Eriugena im Nonnekloster.”

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process but as “a scientific endeavour that constantly renews itself.”16 Revelation moves forward through the method of exegesis: The interpretation of Scripture presupposes a methodical approach to the interpretation of God’s revelation, a hermeneutics through which the interpreter approaches the meaning of what is to be interpreted. In Hildegard’s case, this hermeneutic approach appears integrated into a theological concept in which the interpretation of revelation and the revelation of what is interpreted coincide.17

In other words, all of Hildegard’s theoretical statements emphasise that revelation only becomes instantiated when it is interpreted. However, Alvarez infers from this that Hildegard does not methodologically differentiate between revelation and interpretation. He says, “Hildegard knows no methodological distance between interpreter and text, reader and writing, just as she does not separate the act of interpreting from the interpretation itself.”18 My analysis in the previous chapters has contradicted this impression. Interpretation is the main structural principle of Hildegard’s prophetic texts. Instead of providing her readers with an interpretation that is at the same time a revelation, Hildegard stages the process of interpretation as it must lead to revelation in the individual cognition. The back and forth between allegory and exegesis at the individual level echoes the repeated alternation of sacred history and prophecy at a higher level. The prophet mediates not only between history and the future by interpreting the former for the sake of the latter, she also mediates between history and the individual mind. In that regard, the novelty of what Hildegard does can be interpreted in two ways: she gives new insights into doctrine via new interpretations of Scripture and history, and she writes new allegories that present known doctrine in new forms. As the visions are situated somewhere between biblical prophecy and biblical commentary, the question for me is how her form corresponds to ideas about the special status of Scripture as a text and to contemporary shifts in the practice of biblical exegesis.

16  Fabio Chávez Alvarez, “Die brennende Vernunft”: Studien zur Semantik der “rationalitas” bei Hildegard von Bingen (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1991), 240. 17  Chávez Alvarez, 235. 18  Chávez Alvarez, 235.

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Exceptional Language and the Reference to Nature The Bible, like other sacred books, holds a special status and is distinguished from other literature. The Bible earns its exceptional status by being the divinely inspired book in which revelation is recorded. However, from the beginning of Christian exegesis, the need to defend or prove the exceptionality of Scripture rather than just assert it caused exegetes to claim that scriptural language is in fact different from how other literature uses language. In the Latin West, the Church Fathers marked the distinction by means of the concept of allegory: whereas other literary texts only carry literal sense, the Bible has a deeper meaning, a spiritual sense. I will discuss what Hugh of Saint Victor says about this topic, as a point of view that might shed light on Hildegard’s use of allegory as well. In his exegetical handbook, Hugh stressed how divine language works differently from the language in other texts.19 He says, “in divine Scripture not only the words but also the things signify, a mode that is not usually found in other texts.”20 Philosophers, he continues, only discuss the meaning of words, whereas exegetes are able to speak about the meanings of things as well. The latter is more valuable because words originate in human convention only, whereas things originate in created nature. Because of this, words signify only one meaning (except in the case of homonymy), but things signify as many meanings as they have properties. The multiplicity of properties allows for a multiplicity of meanings and different levels of interpretation beyond the literal one. Thus, the exceptionality of the book of Scripture lies in the fact that it works in tandem with its twin sister, the book of Nature, or what Hennig Brinkmann calls “the second language,” which is the language of things.21 This view is based on a Neoplatonic 19  See next citation, and also Hugh of Saint Victor, “Sententiae de divinitate,” ed. A. M. Piazzoni, Studi Medievali 23 (1982): 918. 20  Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi (Washington: The Catholic university press, 1939), III,2. 21  Friedrich Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalters,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 58 (1958): 1–23; Hennig Brinkmann, “Die ‘zweite Sprache’ und die Dichtung des Mittelalters,” in Methoden in Wissenschaft und Kunst des Mittelalters, ed. Rudolf Hoffmann and Albert Zimmermann, 1970, 155–71; Luisa Valente, “Une sémantique particulière: La pluralité des sens dans les Saintes Écritures (XIIe siècle),” in Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen (Tübingen: Narr, 1995), 12–32; Constant Mews, “The World as Text: The Bible and the Book of Nature in TwelfthCentury Theolgy,” in Scripture and Pluralism: Reading the Bible in Religiously Plural Worlds, ed. Thomas Heffernan and Thomas Burman (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

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sensibility to the sacredness of natural things, as well as on the long tradition manifested in allegorical dictionaries to attribute spiritual meaning to things. Moreover, it is a reaction against the practice of randomly allegorising everything that is figural in the text, and an attempt to stabilise allegorical interpretation by grounding it in its reference to nature.22 The way Hugh explains it, the two books of nature and Scripture are not just analogical. Rather, the authority of scripture must ultimately refer to nature. Scripture mediates nature, which in turn mediates the transcendent divine. In an ascending process “from voice to intellect, from intellect to thing, from thing to reason, from reason to truth,” the verbal signs of Scripture mediate the material signs of nature.23 A justification for reading the Bible in this way is found in the holy book itself, in the words of Paul that were cited time and time again: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”24 “[B]y harboring this message within the corpus of its text,” says Willemien Otten, “scripture itself not only suggests but sanctions an alternate route to the divine through the investigation of nature; this relativizes, if not completely sacrifices, the priority of verbal revelation over other ‘texts’ or forms of revelation in the realm of divine signification.”25 Indeed, the priorities seem to be reversed: instead of being an alternative route, nature is where the biblical road leads. The language of Scripture is deemed exceptional because it is capable of referring to creation and extra-textual reality in its very reality; that is, it is able to refer to the deep dimensions of reality rather than to its surface. Reverting to modern allegorical theory, one could say that the language of Scripture is read as exceptional because it is capable of handling double reference, not just in the superficial manner of metaphor, where in the end only one meaning is referenced, but in the consistently double manner of allegory. To quote Chenu on this (who talks about “symbol,” due to sharing his contemporaries’ aversion of allegory), “the symbol appeals, for the effectiveness of its transfer, to a material whose reality does not dissolve in the process of signification, whether it be the reality of the natural elements, the reality of history in biblical typology, or the reality of  Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1952).  Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon de studio legendi, III,2. 24  Romans 1,20. 25  Willemien Otten, “Nature and Scripture: Demise of a Medieval Analogy,” The Harvard Theological Review 88, no. 2 (1995): 262. 22 23

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the material in the liturgy.”26 What is described here is, in fact, exactly the unique ability of allegory to signify without trading in one meaning for another. When you read a lion as a metaphor for the devil, as in the example that Hugh provides, you obliterate the reality of the lion. However, if you choose to read the text as an allegory, you preserve the reality of the lion as well as that of the devil. The next question would be why Scripture is able to function in this way as an allegory while other literature is not. Of course, in practice, this distinction could not be maintained. First, the eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a new surge of biblical poetry.27 These texts retell biblical stories in such a way as to further enhance their allegorical potential. By imitating biblical signification, they themselves become texts that function on the principle of “inherent secondariness.”28 Second, the same period initiated the practice of allegorically reading non-biblical texts, an ‘integumental’ reading presupposing that, say, Ovid’s Metamorphoses enable and encourage spiritual interpretation.29 Despite conceding that non-biblical texts as well are able to mediate the language of things, Hugh maintains that the Bible signifies differently than other texts. How is this possible? The answer lies in Hugh’s distinction between the opus conditionis and the opus restaurationis: the first is the creation of the world with all its elements, and the second is the incarnation of the Word with its sacraments.30 Creation brought into existence what did not yet exist, and restoration restores what had been deteriorating. Restoration also ensures the veracity of the biblical text. There are two ways, says Hugh, of distinguishing Scripture from other texts, namely in content and method (“in materia et modo”).31 Regarding the first, other 26  Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1976), 181. “le symbole fait appel, pour l’efficacité de son transfert, à une matière dont la réalité ne se dissolve pas dans le processus de la signification, que ce soit la réalité des éléments naturels, que ce soit la réalité de l’histoire en typologie biblique, que ce soit la réalité du matériau en action liturgique.” 27  Brinkmann, “Die ‘zweite Sprache’ und die Dichtung des Mittelalters,” 161. 28  Francesco Stella, “A Repressed Beauty: Biblical Poetics and the Legitimization of Poetry in Medieval Culture,” in Retelling the Bible: Literary, Historical, and Social Contexts, ed. Lucie Doležalová and Tamás Visi (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 323. 29  Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalters,” 18. 30  Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis christianae fidei, Patrologia Latina 176, 1880, I, prologue, 2, col.183. 31  Hugh of Saint Victor, De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris praenotatiunculae, Patrologia Latina 175, 1879, col.11C.

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texts only deal with the work of creation, whereas Scripture is about the work of restoration. The second distinction is that other texts always contain errors and imperfections. They might say something that is true, but the truth is always soiled by some falsity that draws the reader’s mind back to earthly things. In Scripture, however, even what is earthly is informed by true knowledge of the creator and therefore exalts the mind to the consideration and love of divine and heavenly things.32 Again, this is possible because the Bible takes into account not only the way in which words signify but also, through words, the ways in which things signify. Generally, what we can take away from this is that Scripture sees things in light of the work of restoration, and therefore its language is able to represent the sacramental value of nature and thereby function as a truthful allegory. If we now return to Hildegard, it would seem that she repeats the act of restoration on a smaller scale. The reason given for writing Scivias, as I have shown earlier, is that the ability of reading the Bible has deteriorated even among intellectuals. People cannot get out of Scripture what they need for their salvation because they are no longer able to interpret it correctly. So, Hildegard brings new revelations, and, because the main point of Scripture is to open up the understanding of how nature refers to the transcendent divine, it is this relation that the new revelations will elucidate. After having lost the direct knowledge of natural allegory, humans received the Bible to help them by means of verbal allegory; after having lost the ability to read this verbal allegory, humans receive from their prophet instructions on reading allegory. In this context, I want to quote the epilogue of Liber divinorum operum, which makes an interesting addition to the Scivias’ “non loquentem de Scripturis” that I discussed earlier. The epilogue admonishes readers of the book that they should take it seriously and consider it as divine revelation. The reason given for this is not the book’s relation to the Bible, but to the book of life: Sed liber uite, qui scriptura uerbi Dei est, per quod omnis creatura apparuit et quod omnium uitam secundum uoluntatem eterni patris, uelut in se preordinauerat, exspirauit, hanc scripturam per nullam doctrinam humane scientie, sed per simplicem et indoctam femineam formam ut sibi placuit mirabiliter edidit.

 Hugh of Saint Victor, col.11C-D.

32

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But the book of life, which is the writing of the Word of God, through which every creature appears and which has breathed forth the life of everything according to the will of the eternal Father as he had ordained it before time, has produced this text, not through any teaching of human knowledge, but, miraculously and as it pleases him, through a simple and unlearned female form.33

If we place this passage next to the one from the vita where it is said that the catalyst for writing Liber divinorum operum was Hildegard’s sudden understanding of the prologue to the Gospel of John, we see that the book is situated both in relation to the book of Scripture and in relation to the book of life. The visionary herself receives her insight from Scripture, but her book of visions is brought forth by the book of life. In other words, humans need a better understanding of the Bible in order to come closer to an understanding of nature again. This corresponds to the idea of a restoration of the knowledge of nature by the book of Scripture. It seems, then, that Hildegard’s text repeats the act of Scripture towards the book of nature. First, to remedy the loss of the ability to read the book of nature, Scripture offered a real, this time non-metaphorical, book in which natural things are contextualised, structured in a specific order, and explained. As this does not suffice anymore, Hildegard now offers a second text with a much more analytical structure, where allegory and explanation are arranged opposite each other and where Christian doctrine follows straight from the representation of natural things. A course in basic allegorical reading, so to say, which teaches both how to read the Bible and how to read nature. In her own text, Hildegard breaks down allegory to its most essential form, to the basic cognitive process of ‘thing—property—meaning.’ Her own language is therefore exceptional in the same way that scriptural language is: language that produces true allegories, which is to say allegories that correctly represent the way in which natural things function as signs. Reversal of Allegory and Allegoresis The emancipation of allegoresis and allegory from the Bible, which I have illustrated by means of Hildegard’s Homilies, seems to follow directly from 33  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, ed. Peter Dronke and Albert Derolez, CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), V,3,38.

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this shift in focus from symbols in the Bible to how objects function as symbols outside of the Bible. As the focus shifts from the words of the biblical text to the res and facta to which they refer, so the exegetical narrative shifts its focus to the structures of cosmos and salvation history that contain these things and events.34 This leads to what Christel Meier calls “the salvation-historical and cosmological perfection of allegoresis” in authors such as Rupert of Deutz, Hugh of Saint Victor, and Honorius of Regensburg.35 Rupert, for instance, tends to provide his biblical commentaries with a sense of coherence that is previously unknown in exegesis, by structuring them according to historical facts and symbolical numbers.36 His De trinitate et operibus eius is a commentary on the complete Bible, in forty-two books, progressing through salvation history while ordering it and filling in the gaps. This practice of exegesis looks for an encompassing narrative, fills in blank spaces, and strives for coherence and completeness. Eventually, it occasions the transformation from biblical commentary to other forms and genres, such as allegorical lexica, encyclopaedia, and exegetical summas.37 One such work making the leap from biblical exegesis to summa is Hugh of Saint Victor’s masterpiece De Sacramentis, written circa 1134, which functions as an introduction to the allegorical level of Scripture and everything it contains. Hugh says he has brought everything together in one place (“quasi brevem quamdam summam omnium in unam seriem compegi”) so that the exegete’s mind would have something to lean on and would not rove through the various volumes of Scripture without order or a sense of direction.38 It no longer suffices to comment on the Bible book by book and to see whether an allegorical reading might not be able to shed interpretative light on obscure passages. Rather, the exegete must first consider all the subjects and points of doctrine to which the allegory of the Bible refers, only then turning to the text (already ordered and catalogued) to look for these references. It is no longer the narrative of the text itself but the exegesis that provides the structure of the commentary. 34  Christel Meier, “Wendepunkte der Allegorie im Mittelalter: Von der Hermeneutik zur Lebenspraktik,” in Neue Richtungen in der hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Bibelexegese, ed. Robert E. Lerner and Luckner Müller (München: Oldenbourg, 1996), 48. 35  Meier, 48. “die heilsgeschichtliche und kosmologische Vollendung der Allegorese” 36  Meier, 50. 37  Meier, 51. 38  Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis christianae fidei, I, prologue. “I have compiled as if a short summary of everything in one continuous text.”

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Rainer Berndt has described the situation of these newly emancipated exegetical works as dominated by a tension between the necessity of staying close to the Bible and the attraction of imposing one’s own order on a text. These new literary forms of theology—collections of sententiae and summas—have as such lost their reference to Holy Scripture; for the simple reason that they are not commentaries. Their organising principle does not derive from a biblical book that is interpreted. Rather, it is the theological interest of the author of the collection or summa that determines the selection and compilation of the patristic texts.39

The first book of De Sacramentis deals with, among others, the creation, the will of God, angels, the fall, faith, and the sacraments, whereas the second book treats the incarnation, the church, a list of the sacraments, and the second coming and resurrection. This layout is not so different from Hildegard’s Scivias, which is a summa in much the same way as Hugh’s is, except that it summarises not only doctrine and biblical topics but also biblical allegorical form. In the end, both are works that provide an overview of Christian doctrine arranged by subject. Of course, allegorical exegesis had always taken its liberties with the biblical text. The exegetical strategy of Gregory the Great in his Moralia commentary on the book of Job, for instance, is first to determine the subject and then to use the words of the text to discuss the theme.40 Wilken says: “Viewed in this light interpretation is as much an act of discovering what is appropriate to say on the basis of the text as it is of drawing something out of the text. It is an act of composition, of making something out of what is at hand for the audience that is before the interpreter (either as hearer or eventual reader).”41 During the twelfth century, however, 39  Rainer Berndt, “Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Exegese und Theologie in ‘De sacramentis Christiane fidei’ Hugos von St. Viktor,” in Neue Richtungen in der hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Bibelexegese, ed. Robert E.  Lerner and Luckner Müller (München: Oldenbourg, 1996), 72. “Diese neuen literarischen Formen der Theologie— Sentenzensammlungen und Summen—haben als solche den Bezug zur Heiligen Schrift verloren; aus dem einfachen Grund, weil sie keine Kommentare sind. Sie finden ihr Ordnungsprinzip nicht aus einem auszulegenden biblischen Buch. Vielmehr ordnet die theologische Option des Autors der Sammlung bzw. Der Summe Auswahl und Zusammenstellung der Vätertexte.” 40  Robert Louis Wilken, “Interpreting Job Allegorically: The Moralia of Gregory the Great,” Pro Ecclesia 10, no. 2 (2001): 213–26. 41  Wilken, 219.

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theology went further and gained a high measure of formal independence from exegesis, not only asking the questions first and then answering them by means of exegesis but also abandoning the order of the biblical text. A similar evolution takes place in Hildegard’s books of visions, where the allegory is presented as the biblical text that needs exegesis, but where the questions have already been posed, the allegory composed in function of the allegoresis, and the allegoresis planned in function of the theme. Allegorical Form and Truth After abstracting cosmology and salvation history from the biblical narrative so they can serve as an exegetical macro-narrative, the next step is to represent that macro-narrative independently. This is what happens with the new integumental allegories of the School of Chartres and also in the work of Hildegard. Both kinds of newly created allegory infringe on the terrain of biblical allegory and therefore need to justify themselves with regard to the allegory of Scripture. We have seen that as the twelfth century progresses, it becomes ever more difficult to come up with definitions that clearly indicate the difference between biblical and non-biblical allegory. I will briefly bring to mind the attempts by Bede, Hugh, and Bernard Silvester, all of which I have previously discussed. For Bede, the Bible is superior to other texts simply because it refers allegorically to several levels. It does so through either narrated events or rhetorical figures: the kind of reference does not essentially matter, as it is the allegorical method itself that guarantees truth. In Bede’s view, therefore, biblical allegory is true simply because it is allegory and because it is biblical. Hugh is more cautious in this respect. He wants the allegorical reference to be a stable connection between a word and a thing, initiated by the latter. The analogy to the allegory of nature supports the legitimacy of the allegory of the Bible. Only Scripture can guarantee this kind of fundamental connections. What is important to Hugh, therefore, is the reference to nature. The mere presence of allegory alone does not suffice any longer. Bernard Silvester takes this reasoning a step further. As we have seen, in his definition, both biblical allegoria and non-biblical integumentum are instances of involucrum, a rhetorical figure denoting the allegorical process of continued double reference. Both are able to communicate true meaning by means of this process. The difference between these kinds of allegory is that the Bible tells a historical narrative and other kinds of allegory a fictitious narrative.

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In Scripture, a real event refers to a sacred truth, whereas in integumental texts, a fictitious story refers to a philosophical truth. This last theory foreshadows the codification of the difference between biblical and other allegory in thirteenth-century scholastic exegesis, with the reduction of biblical allegory to the specific domain of narrated events in salvation history that refer to other events in salvation history. Only within this domain is real allegorical reference possible, whereas rhetorical figures are deemed incapable of establishing deep connections within reality. This causes the establishment of a firm boundary between scriptural allegory and other kinds of allegory: scriptural allegory is not just true because it is scriptural; neither is it automatically true because it is allegorical; rather, it is true in its specific historical form of allegory, namely typological allegory. My question, however, is whether those who write allegory (rather than write about it) attempt to indicate the difference formally. My study is restricted to only one author, but I have argued that what Hildegard tries to do is exactly to establish such a formal difference between sacred allegory and integumental allegory. In the vein of Hugh’s theory, she does this by fastening the link between words and things and thereby building a system of perfect reference. About the allegory of Bernard Silvester, Jon Whitman has said: If allegory of this kind were to be diagrammed, the diagram would not consist simply of a set of parallel lines connecting an array of individual “names” and “natures” in one-to-one correspondences. From a particular name there might be lines diverging toward multiple natures, while toward a particular nature there might be lines converging from multiple names. In such a diagram various lines of significance would potentially intersect with each other in a network of expanding and contracting relationships. The significance of the whole work would lie in the composite design of the intricate network as a whole.42

Compare this to Hildegard’s allegory, which, through the accompanying exegesis, diagrams itself, and where the diagram does render a “set of parallel lines connecting an array of individual ‘names’ and ‘natures’ in one-­ to-­one correspondences.” Allegory of this kind must be diagrammatic 42   Jon Whitman, “Twelfth-Century Allegory: Philosophy and Imagination,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter T.  Struck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 103.

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because a narrative could never live up to its demands. Hildegard marks off sacred allegory from other allegory through this formal difference. Her visions mirror the privileged reference of Scripture in their form of referencing. They contract the essential structure of allegory as a continuation of double reference into perfection in order to signal the difference with lesser kinds of allegory. In doing this, the visionary follows Hugh in his insistence upon the fact that allegorical reference must connect to the deep structure of reality. But she chooses a completely different path from that indicated by Hugh and Bernard and eventually affirmed in the thirteenth century, namely that of typological allegory in which only history that refers to history is deemed real. Hildegard does not turn to narrated history, but rather turns away from narrative and reality. First of all, narrative and coherence are disregarded in favour of the individual word, because it is the word that signals the properties of a thing, and it is the word that makes the allegorical connection to a thing. In the allegorical hermeneutics adopted by the visionary, narrative plays no role. Hildegard’s conceptualises her allegory not as a narrative but as an aggregate of words, thereby reducing allegory to method. Hildegard’s solution to the question of allegorical truth is to make allegorical form refer perfectly, not to reality, but to its own interpretation. Interestingly, when we look at what is at the other side of the ambiguous integumentum concept, when we look at fiction, we notice a similar phenomenon. Famously, the twelfth century is seen as a breakthrough moment for fiction, mostly located in the vernacular romance tradition. What makes fiction function is that is no longer fabula. Fabula was always the opposite of truthful speech, not only because it is a fictitious story but also because it cannot even allegorically tell another, true, story. Fiction steps out of this opposition by freeing itself of the expectation that it has to refer truthfully to reality either directly or indirectly. It is “indifferen[t] in regard to truth.”43 What it does is to enclose reference within itself, fiction “having no other reference frame than the world created and evoked in […] the

43  Fritz Peter Knapp, “Historicity and Fictionality in Medieval Narrative,” in True Lies Worldwide: Fictionality in Global Context, ed. Anders Cullhed and Lena Rydholm (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), 185.

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text.”44 Just as fiction turns away from the concept of fabula by means of its auto-referentiality, so Hildegard’s allegory turns away from association with the concept of integumentum by setting up a strict scheme where the allegory refers to its own interpretation and its interpretation refers back to the allegory. At both ends of the spectrum from truth to fiction, a similar strategy is employed for radically different ends. In a way, Hildegard comes close to creating an auto-referential world similar to a fictional world. Yet the goal is the opposite, namely to claim a truth that establishes reality itself.

Allegorical Language As the previous part shows, the question of why the Bible is able to mediate divine truth eventually turns into the question of how language is able to refer to both natural and divine reality. Scripture might be unique in its ability of referring to both realities consecutively (first the visible, then the invisible), but it does so through language. Therefore, language must at least provide this referential possibility in order for Scripture to be able to apply it. As Luisa Valente states, “in the second half of the twelfth century more than ever, theological reflection is inseparable from reflection on language.”45 And Gilbert Dahan agrees, “is not all biblical commentary ultimately an interrogation of language?”46 During the twelfth century, in the context of early scholasticism, philosophical and theological problems

44  Wim Verbaal, “How the West Was Won by Fiction: The Appearance of Fictional Narrative and Leisurely Reading in Western Literature (11th and twelfth Century),” in True Lies Worldwide: Fictionality in Global Context, ed. Anders Cullhed and Lena Rydholm (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), 189–202; Knapp, “Historicity and Fictionality in Medieval Narrative,” 193. 45  Luisa Valente, “Langage et théologie pendant la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle,” in Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen (Tübingen: Narr, 1995), 47. “dans la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle plus que jamais, la réflexion théologique est inséparable de la réflexion sur le langage.” 46  Gilbert Dahan, “Nommer les êtres: exégèse et théories du langage dans les commentaires médiévaux de Genèse 2, 19–20,” in Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen (Tübingen: Narr, 1995), 19–20; Valente, “Langage et théologie pendant la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle,” 55. “tout commentaire biblique n’est-il pas, finalement, interrogation sur le langage?”

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are reformulated as linguistic questions.47 For this reason, I have centred my investigation of Hildegard’s allegory not on biblical allegory and exegesis per se, as was Zátonyi’s approach, but on the role of language in and beyond exegesis. My chapter on allegory and allegoresis as forms of cognition has shown that Hildegard conceptualises her exegetical method not only as a hermeneutical tool for reading the Bible but more broadly as a cognitive act of reading the world as a text. The underlying logic seems to be that if one ever wants to become a good reader of the Bible, one will first have to explore one’s own cognitive skills and the possibilities of language. I suggest that the allegory of the visions offers an opportunity for developing these skills in a carefully controlled environment. This also implies that the use of language is not different when reading the world and when reading the Bible. The difference is that, in texts, there is a mediator: the writer or the exegete, both inspired by grace, who compose an allegory and indicate which properties are significant. In Scivias, the world is still an allegory in itself, and can be read as such, but the prophet as a hermeneutic mediator provides a description of the world in abstract and de-individualised language. This kind of language highlights the essential properties of a thing. In Liber divinorum operum, the world as it is must first be composed and transformed before it can be read allegorically: it must be made into an allegory. The difference between the world and a text is therefore, as in Hugh’s theory of restoration, the work of grace, which must mediate meaning where it is no longer apparent. However, although an allegory might be interpretable to a greater or a lesser extent, its language always functions in the same way, because to read allegorically is a cognitive skill. You might need a prophet to give you the allegory and maybe to teach you how to read it, but reading allegorically is a function of language and a gift of human rationality available to everyone. Underlying these ideas is a great faith in language. In Hildegard’s theory of cognition, the mind reads the world as a collection of names. Through a name, it discerns the vires (powers, qualities) or meanings of things. By metaphorically applying these properties to what is not materially present, the mind can gain knowledge about spiritual meanings.

47  Frank Bezner, “Iam non opus est figuris: Konzeptualisierung und Literarisierung des Figuralen bei Peter Abaelard,” in Figura: Dynamiken der Zeiten und Zeichen im Mittelalter, ed. Christian Kiening and Katharina Mertens Fleury (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013), 134.

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Language must therefore be able to refer not only to referents in the natural world but also, through them, to divine referents. This attitude to language is what Maureen Quilligan called ‘the suprarealist’ attitude, which for her is the necessary precondition for allegorical creation in a culture: Allegories are not only always texts, predicated on the existence of other previous, sacred texts, they are always fundamentally about language and the ways in which language itself can reveal to man his highest spiritual purpose within the cosmos. As such, allegory always presupposes at least a potential sacralising power in language, and it is possible to write and to read allegory intelligently only in those cultural contexts which grant to language a significance beyond that belonging to a merely arbitrary system of signs. Allegory will not exist as a viable genre without this “suprarealist” attitude toward words; that is, its existence assumes an attitude in which abstract nouns not only name universals that are real, but in which the abstract names themselves are perceived to be as real and as powerful as the things named. Language itself must be felt to have a potency as solidly meaningful as physical fact before the allegorist can begin […].48

Although I am not convinced of the necessary link between the suprarealist attitude and allegorical writing, I do believe that it is a precondition for the kind of allegory that Hildegard writes. The visionary does seem to be remarkably strong in the faith that names refer to things in a reliable manner. This does not mean that she naively sees a connection between verbal form and meaning, nor that she makes use of the etymological connections between the forms of words in order to connect their meanings. In fact, Hildegard never makes use of etymology, not even in her own encyclopaedia. This is remarkable to say the least. It indicates that the form of the word has little or nothing to do with its truthfulness. How, then, is it possible for a name to refer so loyally to a meaning? And how does this suprarealist view of language fit in with the contemporary preoccupation with language questions which has been referred to as the twelfth century’s linguistic turn?

48  Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre (Cornell University Press, 1992), 156.

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The Origin and Fall of Language Most medieval thinkers held that the foundations of semantics are to be found in an act of imposition: once, there was someone—the impositor— who gave things their names.49 Who that person was and how he decided on which things to name was a source of debate. Some believed the impositor to be Adam. Others saw the impositor as an exceptionally intelligent philosopher. A minority thought that names were imposed “on things individually present,” that is, names were given in order to label individuals.50 This idea follows easily from a literal interpretation of Genesis 2, 19–20, where Adam names the animals. However, most exegetes of the passage did not suppose that Adam gave individual names to individual things nor that he did so in a concrete language. Gilbert Dahan points out how only very few commentaries on the Genesis passage link Adam’s act of name-giving to etymology.51 According to Dahan’s hypothetical explanation, etymological research targets a language that is established and in use (such as Latin or Greek), whereas the original language (Adam’s language or Hebrew) poses very different problems.52 The proto-language is rather conceived from the viewpoint of the signified, as an abstract language in which the impositor put names not on individuals but on species, essences, and principles.53 Most people held that it was the impositor’s understanding of the nature or properties of a thing through which he was able to give names. The impositor understood the structure of the world, so that he was able to make the proper divisions of reality into words. Consequently, an important further question is whether the impositor has a perfect understanding or not. Some philosophers were convinced that the impositor did not have a perfect understanding. Abelard, for instance, believed that the impositor’s knowledge of things could never be perfect; he thought that the impositor’s intention to name something’s nature secured its reference.54 He further suggested that “acts of attention can be directed at an image differently so as to constitute different 49  Margaret Cameron, “Meaning: Foundational and Semantic Theories,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, ed. John Marenbon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 342–62. 50  Cameron, 345. 51  Dahan, “Nommer les êtres: exégèse et théories du langage dans les commentaires médiévaux de Genèse 2, 19–20,” 57. 52  Dahan, 57. 53  Dahan, 57. 54  Cameron, “Meaning,” 348.

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understandings.”55 People do not always perceive the same properties when focusing on the exact same thing. As we have seen, this too is an aspect of exegetical theory and practice. Contrary to Abelard’s idea, however, the common opinion was that the impositor had a direct knowledge of the nature of reality. Thierry of Chartres, for instance, says that Adam was inspired by the Holy Spirit when naming the creatures. When he put names on things, he linked the concepts that existed in the divine mind to the created things through the intermediary of words.56 Hildegard, too, says that when Adam gave names to all the animals and the birds of heaven, he could do this because he “saw and knew them in the vision of this knowledge,” and because in this vision “he heard the Lord speaking to him in the clarity of his divinity.”57 To sum up, in the debate over whether language is natural or conventional, most medieval thinkers were pulling on the same rope. They held that the forms of language are conventional, but there are strong ties binding them to the structures of human cognition that go back to the moment of language’s divine origin. Because of the ties between language and thinking and thought’s original mastery over the elements of nature, there is also a conditional link between nature and language. Language might have originated in paradise, but it was thrown out together with its speakers. Although the proto-language, assuming it was Hebrew, lived on and became the language of Scripture, it never recuperated the perfect association between words and things. Its first speakers’ unmediated understanding of God’s word had been lost, and what remained was a sign, a material shell that might indicate to the mind where to look for meaning but offers no guarantee of finding it. The biblical narratives of the fall and the confusion of languages at Babel teamed up with Neoplatonist philosophy to undermine the  Cameron, 348.  Dahan, “Nommer les êtres: exégèse et théories du langage dans les commentaires médiévaux de Genèse 2, 19–20,” 62. 57  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars tertia: CCLI-CCCXC, ed. Lieven Van Acker and Monika Klaes-Hachmöller, CCCM 91C (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 385 (p.  148). “Mora uero, qua uocauit Adam nominibus eorum cuncta animantia et uolatilia celi, que in uisione scientie sue uidit et cognouit, et in qua Dominum in claritate diuinitatis sue sibi loquentem audiuit, spatium habebat sicut hore tertie usque ad sextam.”/“The time during which Adam called all the animals and birds of the sky by their names, which he saw and knew in the vision of his knowledge, during which he also heard the Lord speaking to him in the clarity of his divinity, had a duration like that of the third hour until the sixth.” 55 56

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referential certainty of language. Neoplatonism stresses the transcendence of the divine, so far removed from human cognition that it is in effect unknowable to the mind and inexpressible in language. “[S]igns were merely traces or vestiges of absent subjects, human or divine, and as such they could represent at best only a diminished—and at worst merely an illusory—presence.”58 That language was not able to express the divine adequately was an opinion shared by all medieval theologians and philosophers. Language is plural and situated in time, while God is one and eternal, which is why words will never be able to express the being of God. In Search of a Theological Language Yet language’s inadequacy with regard to the divine did not lead to silence. Although complete knowledge will never be possible, philosophers (among whom Hildegard) took it as humanity’s task to use language rationally in an effort to gain a better understanding of reality as it can be known. Therefore, searching for the form in which language could fulfil this task became a philosophical project. Language had to be sized up and transformed into its best possible shape. Philosophers looked to create a theological language, or sermo theologicus, a language optimally suited to speak about what is transcendent. In the schools, exegetes devoted themselves to tracing the transformations language undergoes when it refers to the uncreated instead of creation.59 To do this, they made use of grammatical, logical, and rhetorical categories, now no longer to clarify the things in the text that are obscure but to investigate a specific mode of speaking which uses language differently than in normal communication. In Chap. 5, I have cited the prologue to Alan of Lille’s Distinctiones, where he says that, in Scripture, words do not follow the rules of grammar, metaphor does not behave like Cicero tells us, and a trustworthy statement is not necessarily that which we consider to be logical.60 For instance, there is the discussion on the verb ‘esse.’ In normal usage, language analysis distinguishes between its existential and its predicative function. In theological language, however, the distinction disappears, as nothing can be predicated of God that is not his 58  Eric Jager, The Tempter’s Voice: Language and the Fall in Medieval Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 57. 59  Valente, “Langage et théologie pendant la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle.” 60  Alan of Lille, Distinctiones dictionum theologicalium, Patrologia Latina 210 (Paris, 1855).

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existential state.61 Most theologians therefore hold that the verb ‘esse’ only carries its full value when said of God: only he “is” in the way that nothing created can be.62 Therefore, the verb is only properly referential when it refers to God. Alan of Lille, however, refutes even this, saying that no word can properly be said of God, although ‘esse’ is the most proper word for Him.63 This is the Dionysian sliding scale at work in Neoplatonism, where every affirmation is negated in order to be more truthful. This is not to say that every affirmation is false and every negation is true. Rather, nothing said in language or thought by humans can really be true, but that does not mean it is false. Small adjustments to our enunciations about God bring us gradually closer to speaking more truthfully. Not only negation leads language upwards but also abstraction.64 Assertions can be ranked from completely inappropriate or incongruent to more appropriate or congruent when applied to the divine. For instance, one of the most appropriate assertions you can make is to say that God is one and triune, or that God “is.” To speak about God’s body parts, however, as the Bible so often does, is not outright wrong when taken to be a symbol, but it is not very appropriate. Both assertions can in turn be negated, and must be negated to come closer to the truth, but they are not false in themselves and can lead the mind upwards. Thus, we see that theoretical inexpressibility of God is mediated through a careful use of special language. The most important category in the construction of a theological language is the rhetorical principle of metaphor, because it contains within itself a transposition of meaning from concrete to abstract. Wanda Zemler-­ Cizewski discusses how metaphor evolved from being an exclusively rhetorical concept to a theological one by tracing the meaning of the opposition between proprium and translatum.65 This distinction goes back at least to Cicero, for whom verbum translatum is the metaphorical use of a word. He says that metaphors sometimes enter the language out of necessity, when a certain meaning lacks a proper word, but are mostly used for embellishment and rhetorical enjoyment. Augustine adopted the  Valente, “Langage et théologie pendant la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle,” 43.  Valente, 43–44. 63  Valente, 44. 64  Paul Rorem, The Dionysian Mystical Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2015), 39. 65  Zemler-Cizewski, “From Metaphor to Theology: Proprium and Translatum in Cicero, Augustine, Eriugena, and Abelard.” 61 62

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concept of metaphor from classical rhetoric when he used it to explain transfers of meaning in the Bible. Yet he speaks about translated or figurative sense not only to point out the known metaphorical uses of words but also to discover the spiritual meaning of a passage. This gives much more weight to the figure, as it becomes the key to allegorical meaning and the true message of a text. The tipping point from rhetorical to philosophical language occurs a first time in John Eriugena’s work, where metaphor becomes the general state of language when applied to the divine. All language is improperly used of God, and so all language is metaphorical in reference to God. In the words of Zemler-Cizewski: Like Augustine, Eriugena is sensitive to the highly figurative language of scripture. Unlike Augustine, however, he holds that not only the figurative or metaphorical, but all language about God is transposed (translatum) and not used in its proper (proprium) sense, since all language is devised to refer to creatures, but not the Creator.66

This specialised sense of metaphor, which now refers to the way in which language itself is improper and must be translated, is taken up by the early scholastics. To Abelard, translatum becomes the expression “for the process by which the theologian selects technical terms for his specialized vocabulary.”67 For instance, when the theologian speaks about “the father” or “the persons” in the Trinity, the way in which these terms function as theoretical concepts must be very carefully distinguished from their normal usages. The same goes for ‘metaphor’ itself: although it also remains the rhetorical figure from the handbooks, it gains a new and specialised meaning by which it stands for every transposition of meaning from colloquial to philosophical language use. A Sphere of Literary Symbolism? This generalised use of metaphor as a stand-in for denoting the inadequacy of language and the possibilities generated by this inadequacy is not only found in logical-linguistic analysis. It also plays out in a sphere that has long been viewed as the alter ego of the twelfth-century linguistic turn, as the alternative to a strict theological language governed by grammar and  Zemler-Cizewski, 45.  Zemler-Cizewski, 46.Ibid., 46.

66 67

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logic. This alternative has been designated varyingly as metaphor, allegory, integument, symbolism, a symbolical mentality, fabula, myth, imaginative literature, and poetic Platonism.68 Frank Bezner’s Vela veritatis investigates the intellectual history of the concept of a hidden truth in the twelfth century.69 That is, the history of the idea that there is a truth “which, veiled by metaphors or riddles, ciphers, figures and figurations, is hidden ‘behind’, ‘under’, ‘in’ literary, philosophical or religious texts-and is to be brought to light through an act of ‘revealing’ interpretation.”70 Bezner’s main point is that this symbolic sphere has been artificially separated from its intellectual context by modern scholars and that it should be reintegrated into the early scholastic episteme. Its Neoplatonist mode of expression and the ascension “per creaturas ad creatorem” (“through the creatures to the creator”) by means of metaphor and symbol is part of the search for a theological language and should not be divorced from more dialectical approaches. By separating this sphere from the rest of the twelfth-century intellectual landscape, modern scholars have wished to delineate a literary theory for the Middle Ages, or in any case a theory of medieval literature in which literature serves as a counterweight to a philosophy that appropriates the liberal arts for its own purposes. But Bezner argues that one cannot even consider the amalgam that makes up medieval hermeneutics as an autonomous discipline or even a coherent whole, let alone that one could extract from it a theory on literature.71 Add to this the fact that the linguistic turn of the twelfth century sweeps through rhetoric and hermeneutics by fundamentally rethinking them in the light of the new philosophical questions, and the following becomes clear: It is not the tradition of allegory, the genuine hermeneutic fields of biblical exegesis, myth interpretation or other allegorical systems that make 68  Winthrop Wetherbee, Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of the School of Chartres (Princeton: Princeton university press, 1972); Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 1974). 69  Frank Bezner, Vela veritatis: Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der Intellectual History des 12. Jahrhunderts, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 85 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005). 70  Bezner, 5. “die sich, von Metaphern oder Rätseln, Chiffren, Figuren und Figmenten verschleiert, ‘hinter’, ‘unter’, ‘in’ literarischen, philosophischen oder religiösen Texten verbirgt—und durch einen Akt der ‘enthüllenden’ Interpretation ans Licht zu bringen ist.” 71  Bezner, 63.

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­ nderstandable the fascinating discussion about integumenta and involucra, u about the sensible or nonsensical notion of a figurally distorted ‘truth of concealment’ in the 12th century, but rather the incessant effort for an orderly clarification of an endangered knowledge.72

Rather than viewing allegory in the twelfth century only as the renewal of a deep-rooted tradition or as the expression of a medieval habitus, Bezner advocates the study of it as a part of the history of philosophy and of the development of intellectual institutions. Although allegory would in later times be banished from the scholastic programme, the twelfth-century intellectual milieu was one in which the position and role of philosophy, philosophical method, and intellectuals themselves were still undetermined and in motion. As Bezner argues, discussions on hidden allegorical knowledge and symbolism actively participate in this process of negotiating the role of reason, of the liberal arts as a methodology, and of language as the basis for a scientific method. They contribute to the establishment and shape of early scholasticism rather than existing as a separate sphere. Hildegard’s Faith in Language In my opinion, this approach proves very helpful in analysing Hildegard’s allegory within the context of her time and intellectual environment. Although Hildegard-scholars have done wonderful work in tracing the links that establish Hildegard as a prophet, abbess, woman, and intellectual of the mid-twelfth-century Rhineland, the allegorical aspect has always been referred to the overarching and a-historical sphere of a symbolic mindset. For instance, Christel Meier concludes her article on the allegorical forms of Alan of Lille and Hildegard by saying that these models are not bound to a specific century, for they were present before and after the twelfth century in more or less modified and mixed forms.73 72  Bezner, 40. “Nicht die Tradition der Allegorie, die genuine hermeneutischen Felder von Bibelexegese, Mythenauslegung oder anderen allegorischen Systemen machen die faszinierende Diskussion um die integumenta und involucra, um die sinnhafte oder unsinnige Vorstellung einer uneigentlich verzerrten ‘Wahrheit der Verhüllung’ im 12. Jahrhundert verständlich, sondern das unablässige Bemühen nach einer ordnenden Klärung eines gefährdeten Wissens.” 73  Christel Meier, “Zwei Modelle von Allegorie im 12. Jahrhundert: Das allegorische Verfahren Hildegards von Bingen und Alans von Lille,” in Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie, ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 84.

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Characteristic is also Maura Zátonyi’s approach. She places Hildegard in the tradition of Neoplatonist philosophy based on the writings of pseudo-Dionysius, with special emphasis on the principles of symbolism and negative theology. Then, she separates this area of mystical theology from what she calls “the philosophical-theological discourse” of the schools, for the reason that the latter rejects the use of figurative language: “The use of images and metaphorical language was rejected in philosophical-­theological discourse. Since Hildegard does not seek to dissolve images into concepts in her writings, but on the contrary strongly emphasises the principle of concealment, of figuration, she stands outside the tradition that strove to reveal the signs and the multiplicity of forms.”74 This statement represents a common tendency in Hildegard-scholarship: that of associating Hildegard specifically with Neoplatonist mystical theology.75 I think that much more research should go into the matter before we can make this case, and that the association should certainly not be used to separate Hildegard from contemporary philosophy and theology.76 First, one cannot separate imagery-friendly philosophy, which would then be a Neoplatonist strain, from imagery-phobic philosophy in the twelfth century. Rather, all philosophy is intensely concerned with signs and symbols, developing a variety of ways to deal with them. How could it be any other way, if everyone agrees not only that language is thoroughly figurative but also that all language is completely figurative when applied to God?  Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 265. “Bildverwendung und metaphorische Sprache wurden im philosophisch-theologischen Diskurs abgelehnt. Da Hildegard in ihren Schriften die Bilder nicht in Begriffe aufzulösen sucht, sondern im Gegenteil das Prinzip der Verhüllung, der Verbildlichung stark macht, steht sie außerhalb der Tradition, die sich darum mühte, die Zeichen und die Gestaltenvielfalt zu enthüllen.” 75  Viki Ranff, “Die ‘incomprehensibilitas Dei’ im Werk Hildegards. Zur Bedeutung negativer Formulierungen in der Theologie,” in Unversehrt und unverletzt: Hildegards von Bingen Menschbild und Kirchenverständnis heute, ed. Rainer Berndt and Maura Zátonyi, Erudiri Sapientia 12 (Münster: Aschendorf, 2015), 121–58; Marco Rainini, “Ildegarda, l’eredità di Giovanni Scoto e Hirsau. Homo medietas e mediazione,” in Unversehrt und unverletzt. Hildegards von Bingen Menschenbild und Kirchenverständnis heute, ed. Rainer Berndt and Maura Zátonyi, Erudiri Sapientia 12 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2015), 139–65; Meier, “Eriugena im Nonnekloster.” 76  A case also made by Constant Mews, “Process Thought, Hildegard of Bingen and Theological Tradition,” Concrescence 1 (2000); Constant Mews, “Hildegard and the Schools,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke (London: The Warburg Institute, 1998), 89–110; Justin A.  Stover, “Hildegard, the Schools, and Their Critics,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Beverly Kienzle, George Ferzoco, and Debra Stoudt (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 109–35. 74

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Second, I do not see how Dionysian Platonism would be the best framework for Hildegard’s allegory. In Zátonyi’s view, the Neoplatonist inspiration means that Hildegard’s allegory follows a movement that goes beyond human cognition, language, and rationality. Yet the text itself states that allegorical interpretation is a cognitive power, that words are indispensable to thinking, and that rationality is our only chance of learning to know God. My analysis of what the vision texts have to say about language and signs has rather laid bare a thoroughly horizontal model of knowledge, one that always stays within the ambit of human rationality and makes no effort to envisage knowledge as a process of ascension. Moreover, Hildegard never uses the method of negative theology. She never takes the step of undermining her own symbols or of turning them into paradoxes. Her method is fully affirmative: she draws out the similarities between the properties of concrete and abstract things and weaves these similarities into an allegorical tapestry. She does not unravel the tapestry’s threads once it is completed. Zátonyi considers the allegorical images to be “dissimilar symbols,” meaning that they do not seem to be appropriate to their referents. However, their perfect coherence with the allegoresis seems to contradict such an interpretation. One example that Zátonyi highlights as a case of apophatic theology is Hildegard’s use of a blinding light to represent God. On the one hand, light carries some appropriate similarity to God, because it represents his omnipresence, eternity, and highness. On the other hand, Zátonyi claims, Hildegard highlights even more the dissimilarity of light to God, when the visionary describes how the light makes it impossible for her to see anything: by its own radiance, the light makes itself invisible.77 So, although the light is a well-known motif in the Christian tradition, Hildegard does not use it to say anything about God, but to express exactly the inexpressibility of God.78 Therefore, Zátonyi concludes that negativity is identified as the only possibility of knowing God and speaking of God.79 However, this is to confuse speech content with speech mode. Hildegard uses similarity to positively affirm that God is unknowable and inexpressible, namely the similarity between the property of light that it is blinding and the fact that we know about God that he is unknowable. The

 Zátonyi, Vidi et intellexi, 302.  Zátonyi, 302. 79  Zátonyi, 303. 77 78

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content of what is said is a restriction on knowledge, but the mode of speaking is affirmative. This light metaphor seems to capture in a nutshell Hildegard’s general view on the possibilities of allegory. She agrees that language cannot express the divine itself and concludes that, if this is not language’s purpose, we should not use it that way. What is important to her is the distinction between God and creation. In a move that is quite the opposite of Neoplatonist ascension, she draws a dividing line between God and his works, not of course ontologically but epistemologically. Within this ambit, language works perfectly fine, and words give access to the nature of reality, which in turn teaches us about humanity’s history and destiny. Of course, this does not mean that Hildegard is not interested in, for instance, trinitarian issues, but she does seem to put a limit on the knowledge that humans need about the Trinity, which is how it manifests itself to humankind. This is the terrain where human rationality can be active; beyond that terrain, words just do not function anymore. But how much faith does Hildegard really have in the power of metaphors to reach deep into the structure of human reality? On the one hand, there is one passage where she seems to imply that names do not fall perfectly in line with realities. The passage occurs in a theological treatise on the attributes of the trinitarian persons, written in response to a question put to her by Eberhard of Bamberg in his dispute with Gerhoch of Reichersberg.80 There, Hildegard explains that the attributes of the persons of the Trinity (in this case, the Father is eternity, the Son equality, and the Spirit the connection between them) show how the three persons are one and equal to each other. She adds: Quisquis hoc in fide non habet, Deum non uidet, quia de eo abscidere uult quod est, quia Deus non est diuidendus. Opera etiam que Deus condidit, quando homo illa diuidit, integram proprietatem nominum suorum non habent sicut antea habuerunt. Whoever does not hold this in faith, does not see God, because they want to take away from him what he is, because God cannot be divided. When people divide the works that God establishes, they no longer have the complete propriety of their names that they had before.81

80  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars prima: I-XC, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 31R (p. 84). 81  Hildegard of Bingen, 31R (p. 84).

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The first sentence is clearer than the second: God cannot be separated, and therefore you cannot appoint different attributes to different persons of the Trinity. The second sentence is about what God created, and says that even in creation separation brings about a state of imperfect propriety. When humans divide reality (assumedly by means of naming them), the integrity of the names they had disintegrates. It can further be assumed that, before the names were human words, they were concepts in the mind of God, where they held their perfect integrity.82 On the other hand, Hildegard often assumes a tight association between the literal and figurative meanings of a metaphor. In Scivias, this association is of a more superficial nature, in the sense that she seems to attach a bit too much value to “the letter that kills.” For instance, the prophet claims that priests should be men “sapientis ingenii et uirilis animi” (“with a wise mind and a brave soul”) but adds that they also should have no physical impairment whatsoever.83 The reason given for this Old Testament–like injunction (cf., Leviticus 21, 16–23) is of an anagogical nature, namely because there will be no wounds to the souls of people in the kingdom of heaven. ‘Vulnus’ means both a physical weakness and a spiritual one, and in an allegorical reading of the priesthood, this means that priests must prefigure physically on earth what humankind’s state will be spiritually in heaven. Hildegard admits that there is no causal relationship between the two: people with disabilities will not be excluded from heaven as long as their souls are sound. She concedes that what really matters is the spiritual and not the material dimension. Still, because of the symbolism, Hildegard thinks it is better that these people perform their good works in the shadows. This way of thinking is essentially allegorical, as it preserves both meanings of the metaphor. A metaphor will use the literal meaning as a stepping stone to the figurative one in order to discard it, whereas an allegory will keep on to both meanings. Another example in Scivias is the following: 82  Hildegard of Bingen, 31R (p. 84). I should note that I do find the part “sicut antea habuerunt” strange in the context of Hildegard’s other statements about language, where language appears as that which divides reality through human means for the sake of human cognition. Elsewhere, she does not refer to the concepts in God’s mind as names. It might be of interest to note that the Riesenkodex does not have this particular phrase. The edition adopts it from earlier manuscripts which record Hildegard’s letters as they were sent but without yet ordering them chronologically or hierarchically. See the introduction to the edition. 83  Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, 1978, II,6.

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Per exterius intellegitur interius; quoniam ut homo cognoscit ex uisibili et alta persona hominis quomodo homo timendus ac honorandus et amandus sit, sic etiam in eodem intellectu intellegat qualiter inuisibilis et altissimus Deus metuendus ac uenerandus et diligendus sit super omnia. Nam per exteriorem et saecularem dominationem admonetur homo interioris et spiritalis potestatis diuinae maiestatis, quae ita clausa et absconsa est homini, ut non possit carnalibus oculis eius uideri nisi quantum fide illius capitur. Et quandoquidem mortali creaturae Deus inuisibilis est, saltem per uisibile magisterium discat homo timere et uenerari ipsum Altissimum eiusdem praelationis institutorem. Through the outside can be understood the inside. Because, as when people recognise by the visible and high status of someone how that person must be feared and honoured and loved, so they understand with the same insight how the invisible and highest God must be dreaded and worshipped and adored above everything else. Because through the outer and secular power, they are warned of the inner and spiritual power of the divine majesty, which is so closed off and hidden to people, that they cannot perceive it with their bodily eyes except to the extent that they grasp it in their faith. And since God is invisible to mortal creatures, at least the people learn through visible governance how to fear and worship that Highest power who established it.84

The allegorical reading of earthly things appears here as completely unproblematic and straightforward. There is no qualification of the analogy, let alone a negation. The link is pure similarity, set of course against the background of the ever-present dissimilarity of visible and invisible. This is the same simple allegorising of the world that we also find in the Scivias cosmos vision. Moreover, it is the same relation that defines the mode of the vision: metaphorically, seeing is knowing, and so when Hildegard sees the vision, this is at the same time an act of knowing. We could even adduce Hildegard’s stated reason for her prophetic mission, “[i]stud tempus muliebre est” (“this time is womanly”): the figuratively weak, womanly, period needs a literally female prophet.85 In line with the growing complexity of allegorising the cosmos in Liber divinorum operum, the link between letter and spirit gains more nuance in the last book. It also, however, seems to become even more tight. For instance, the decline of humanity at the end times is mirrored in the decline of humanity’s natural environment: “Then, the greenness of virtues dries out and every justice becomes weaker and declines. And even  Hildegard of Bingen, III,6,13.  Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium. Pars prima: I-XC, 23 (p. 65). “this time is womanly.”

84 85

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the greenness of the earth declines in every budding sprout, because the higher air now has a different composition than previously and is modified.”86 It is not completely clear how the two are connected, but again the metaphor of “green” virtues “drying out” is closely tied to the literal humidity of the cosmos. An interesting example further occurs in Homily 53, in which Hildegard causally links the viridity of human piety to the make-up of our natural environment: Ab aqua enim uiriditas et uita creaturarum sustentatur, quia ipsa super terram et sub terra est. Nam Spiritus Domini ferebatur super aquam et eam quasi uiuentem fecit. Vnde cum homines mala opera faciunt, aer et aqua tanguntur; et aqua ea ad solem, lunam, et ad stellas profert, quoniam haec de aqua lucent, et sic sydera ista inconsuetis terroribus homines secundum opera eorum concutiunt, pre confusione, quia aquae simul fuse sunt a Spiritu Sancto, sonitus maris et fluctuum, quoniam haec sonitum plangendo emittunt propter peruersa opera hominum. Water sustains the greenness and the life of all creatures, because it is above and under the earth. Because the spirit of the Lord was hovering over the waters and made them come alive. Therefore, if humans do bad deeds, the air and the water is influenced, and the water carries them to the sun, the moon, and the stars, because these shine from the water. And so these stars strike the people with unknown terrors according to their deeds, because of their confusion, because the waters are poured down at once by the Holy Spirit, the sound of the sea and the rivers, since they make this sound as a complaint about the perverse deeds of humans.87

In line with the cosmographical systems of the Chartrians, Hildegard constructs a completely natural sequence of cause and reaction, without having recourse to divine intervention, to explain the link between human depravity and natural disasters.88 The bad deeds of humans, she says, have  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, III,5.   Hildegard of Bingen, Expositiones Evangeliorum, Opera Minora I, CCCM 226 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 53 (p. 321). 88  Of course, this does not mean that ethics are subjugated to cosmology, rather the other way around, as Charles Burnett explains: “First, one can argue that for Hildegard the astrological influences work in the reverse direction to those in scientific astrology. Let me explain. Because the whole substance of the universe is subject to good and evil and the economics of Christian eschatology, each of our actions affect the elements and hence can cause turbulence in the heavens.” Charles Burnett, “Hildegard of Bingen and the Science of the Stars,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett (London: Warburg Institute, 1998), 115. 86 87

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an impact on the air and the water in their immediate vicinity. The water cycle carries their influence up to the sun, the moon, and the stars. This explanation sheds a new light on the previous statement about the viridity of both human morals and natural environment. We are led to believe that there exists a natural chain that grounds the metaphor of viridity in reality, so that the metaphor is no longer a cognitive transposition of meaning but the apprehension of the natural links between things. This way of solidifying metaphor corresponds beautifully to Quilligan’s claim that “[l]anguage itself must be felt to have a potency as solidly meaningful as physical fact before the allegorist can begin […].”89 In sum, although the first citation voices some doubts about the divisions that language imposes on reality, the other passages that I have cited express the conviction that linguistic metaphors faithfully reflect the structure of non-linguistic reality. This seems to be based on the same principle of an analogous structure between word and thing that informs Hildegard’s discussion on names in Liber divinorum operum. She says there that a word consists of three forces because a creature consists of three forces.90 The word thus has the same structure as the thing that it signifies. To a thing, there is its appearance, its function and use, and the source from which its vitality derives. These are the three powers that are present in a thing, of which the second one is not material and therefore not visible, and the third one is neither visible nor knowable. The same powers inform the name of a thing. It has a material aspect, direct meaning, and indirect meaning. Apparently, this analogous structure ensures the effectivity of the act of naming something. Moreover, the fact that the third power of a name can be known, contrary to the third power of a thing, implies that the deep structure of a thing can be discovered through the use of names. This is probably the reason that for Hildegard the word is not just the representation of an intellection that is already in the mind. She emphasises several times that things can only be understood through words. There is no previous understanding without the word. The word does not just signify meaning; it establishes meaning. Language structures understanding according to the same principles by which things exist in the world on different levels, and that is why it can be so effective. Therefore, even if language is a convention among people, it is natural

 Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, 156.  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum, I,4105.

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insofar as its structure was given to humans in order to perceive and understand reality. This attitude to language can rightly be called suprareal, as it “presupposes at least a potential sacralising power in language” and grants it “a significance beyond that belonging to a mere arbitrary system of signs.”91 To Quilligan, these are the criteria that shape a cultural context where it is possible to write and read allegorically. But beyond providing a context, it seems to me that Hildegard’s trust in language correlates with the specific form of her allegory and allegoresis. First, her focus on “the name,” namely the noun, as a unit of language that can be analysed on its own, which is very much the opposite of what happens in dialectics at the time, corresponds to an allegory that is composed of individual words and that should also be interpreted on the level of the single word. Every word in itself is an interpretive unit, in the visionary’s language theory as well as in her allegoresis and allegory. Second, the visionary allegory systematically initiates a movement through the three levels of meaning outlined in Liber divinorum operum: the word (“quod videtur”) is analysed for its properties (“quod scitur”) and so gives access to a spiritual meaning (“quod non videtur”).

Conclusion The specific form of Hildegard’s allegory is the unique realisation of a unique perspective: that of her fascination with the natural world as a system of symbolic signification, her trust in the suprarealist capacities of language, her language theory centred on the individual noun, her cyclical conception of cognition, her prophetic mission and its supra-biblical function, and her use and epistemic translation of basic encyclopaedic hermeneutics. If we extend this line of thinking somewhat further, we can tie these ideas to Hildegard’s position in the intellectual playing field. Hildegard’s intellectual position is notoriously difficult to determine even with respect to her use of tradition, since she situates herself outside of education, literary tradition, and intellectual debates. Hildegard’s dissociation from human learning, whether done deliberately or out of necessity, is reflected in how she shapes her allegory. Although allegory was traditionally defined as a part of rhetoric, the allegory of the visions seems intent on distancing  Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, 156.

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itself as much as possible from the definition of allegory as something that says one thing and means something else. Because the allegory is completely directed to the indirect level of reference, it seems to reject the definition of allegory as an integument, or a veil that hides deeper truths. Although this rejection of rhetoric might seem obvious, Hildegard even seems averse to applying the idea that allegory in the Bible has a literal level that stands on its own and then a spiritual meaning besides. At least, this is what emerges from her practice. In the Homilies, for instance, literal readings are rare exceptions. For the rest, the narration and internal logic of the biblical text are subordinated to the spiritual interpretations. The narrative logic of the biblical text is not even a factor in constructing a spiritual interpretation; only the properties of the individual word are. Thus, Hildegard avoids the part of biblical exegesis where the stress is more on the accumulation of knowledge than on the creative transformation of it. All of this signals a certain way of positioning herself. Hildegard is highly critical of the dangers of turning theology into a professional discipline, which means that theological study no longer exclusively aims at contemplation and moral improvement. Nonetheless, she shares the schoolmasters’ trust in human rationality, as long as it is grounded in grace and directed at God instead of one’s own intellectual glory.92 Moreover, she shares their interest in language as the mediator between the natural world, the divine, texts, and the human mind. I have argued that this becomes apparent not only in her transformation of allegorical hermeneutic discourses but also in her own self-fashioning of her role as a prophet. Lastly, I have argued that for Hildegard, the twelfth-century linguistic turn and the related transformation of allegorical hermeneutics go hand in hand with a self-conscious adaptation of allegorical form, which reflect these intellectual interests. Hildegard’s specific allegorical form is not just an amalgam of traditional forms that she picks up and combines. It is not just the use of allegory that is significant, but the form itself, which is created by a method taken out of its restricted hermeneutic context and reintegrated into a theory of cognition and language. The relation between allegorical hermeneutics and allegorical form, then, needs to be studied through a few intermediaries. A particular theory of allegory does not directly correlate to a particular allegorical form, especially because allegorical theory is rarely about form. Rather, both 92  Mews, “Hildegard and the Schools”; Stover, “Hildegard, the Schools, and Their Critics”; Chávez Alvarez, Die brennende Vernunft.

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theory and form of allegory are a reflection upon questions of language, epistemology, and cognition. To write allegory is to impose a structure on the treasure trove of symbols, metaphors, and deep meanings that make up a culture. Especially in times or environments where these concepts were being questioned and problematised, the writing of allegory was confronted with the following questions: How can a word have multiple meanings; what is the relation between the multiple meanings of a word; can polysemy be continued and stabilised? The method through which one produces a particular allegorical form will have its roots in beliefs and theories that are able to provide an answer to these questions. It is clear that Hildegard’s choice for allegory brings up these questions, and that the way in which she answers them has an impact on how she writes her allegory. Her form bears witness to an ongoing dialogue with the problematisation of language and interpretation that is part of the early scholastic episteme. Although her answers to the questions belong to the monastic tradition of knowing, reading, and writing, she clearly perceives that there are new questions that make the activity of writing allegory a highly charged one, and she is willing to accept the challenge. This is not only evinced by the fact that she replaces hermeneutics with a theory of language in cognition, or by her heavy emphasis on words as the channels of understanding. Rather, the fact alone that we find such an association of theories to support the use of allegory and its specific form already indicates that this form is highly aware of its precarious position within its intellectual environment.

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Index1

A Abelard, 15, 171, 178, 268, 272 Alan of Lille, 9, 10, 15, 29, 84, 191, 194, 270, 274 Alcher of Clairvaux, 238 Alcuin, 237 Allegoria in factis, allegoria in verbis, 57, 211 Anagogical, 5, 54, 106, 139, 278 Anselm of Canterbury, 151, 167 Aristotle, 148, 149, 165 Augustine, 36, 55–57, 59, 149, 150, 155, 160, 161, 166, 167, 170, 172, 173, 174n88, 177, 183, 217, 226, 228, 233, 237, 240, 271 B Bede, 57–59, 211, 262 Bernard of Chartres, 96

Bernard Silvester, 9–12, 15, 20, 60, 62, 84, 158n44, 262 Boethius, 10, 11, 148, 151, 165, 167, 170, 185 C Calcidius, 150, 151 Cassiodore, 151, 217 Clarembald of Arras, 152 Cognition, 15, 135, 233, 237, 238, 242, 278n82 Continued metaphor, 48, 65, 113 Cosmos, 128–135 D de Hanville, Jean, 10 Dingbedeutung, 187, 191 Donatus, 196

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Wouters, Allegorical Form and Theory in Hildegard of Bingen’s Books of Visions, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17192-5

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INDEX

E Eberhard of Bamberg, 277 Elisabeth of Schönau, 228 Eriugena, John, 217, 272 Eucherius of Lyon, 192 Ezekiel, 1, 3, 125, 222 F Fabula, 97, 264, 273 Fabulism, 82–83 Fiction, 264 Figuralism, 82–83 G Galand de Reigny, 124 Galen, 154 Gerhoch of Reichersberg, 277 Gilbert of Poitiers, 147, 152 Glossing, 94, 107, 109, 114 Gregory the Great, 102, 158, 217, 261 Guibert of Gembloux, 228 H Herluca of Epfach, 7 Hirsau, 7 Honorius of Regensburg, 238 Hugh of Saint Victor, 115, 169, 178, 182, 186, 207, 255, 260, 262 I Imaginatio, 162 Incomprehensibility, 28, 30, 35 Integumentum, 10–13, 19–21, 52, 60, 61, 224, 257, 262, 273 Isaac of Stella, 151 Isidore, 115 Isidore of Seville, 193, 207, 217, 237

L Lectio, 108 Liber divinorum operum, 4, 39, 125, 128, 131, 138, 153, 159, 172, 173, 179, 186, 219, 258, 279 Liber vite meritorum, 5, 38, 127, 137, 209, 216 Literal, 68, 72, 98–100, 105, 106 M Macrobius, 60, 61, 218 Martianus Capella, 10, 11, 20, 60 Meta-commentary, 31, 251, 253 Metaphor, 41, 65, 81, 113, 188, 196, 271, 278 Metonymy, 76–79, 81 Microcosm, 10, 103 Mischformen, 9 Mysticism, 8, 17, 275 N Neoplatonism, 17, 83, 187, 269, 273, 275 New formalism, 18 O Opus conditionis, opus restaurationis, 257 Origen, 207, 208 Otloh of St. Emmeram, 8 P Parable, 118, 211, 222 Personification, 21, 29 Petershausen chronicle, 7 Platonism, 10, 97, 149, 151, 273 Prophet, 2, 5, 7, 252 Proto-language, 268

 INDEX 

Prudentius, 10 Pseudo-Dionysius, 151, 186, 275 Pun, 66–72 Q Qualitätenallegorese, 197 Quintilian, 48, 64, 107 R Raban Maur, 158, 160, 189, 193, 207, 217 Rationalisation, 13, 21 Rationality, 147–148, 210, 215 Richard of Saint Victor, 162 Roscelin of Compiègne, 172n80 Rupert of Deutz, 260 S Scholasticism, 13, 147, 148, 151, 165, 184, 265 School of Chartres, 9, 10, 10n24, 60, 262, 280 Scivias, 4, 27, 34, 119, 127, 129, 135, 152, 157, 171, 186, 205, 230, 243, 251, 278

291

Sensus parabolicus, 59 Sermo theologicus, 270 Suprarealist, 80 Symbol, 44, 74, 84, 85, 87, 256, 271, 273, 275 T Thierry of Chartres, 12, 269 Timaeus, 150 Troping, 95 Tropological, 5, 54, 97, 102, 103, 105–107 Typology, 52–55, 58, 81, 83, 106 V Verwissenschaftlichung, 13 Villers, monks of, 162 Viriditas, 148, 177 Visio corporalis, spiritualis, intellectualis, 225–244 Vita Hildegardis, 250 W William of Conches, 12, 15, 20, 96