Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard's Illuminated "Scivias" 9781512823080

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Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth ­Century

THE M ­ IDDLE AGES SER IES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

COSMOS, LITURGY, AND THE ARTS IN THE TWELFTH ­CENTURY Hildegard’s Illuminated Scivias

Margot E. Fassler

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

 Copyright © 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www​.­upenn​.­edu​/­pennpress Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Hardcover ISBN: 9781512823073 Ebook ISBN: 9781512823080 Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

For François, who loves the liturgy For Luke, who loves the stars

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

ix

List of T ­ ables

xiv

List of Abbreviations

xv

Note on Conventions

xvii

Introduction 1 Chapter 1. The Cosmological Background

13

Chapter 2. Scivias on the Rupertsberg

38

Chapter 3. Cosmology and the Liturgy: Hildegard and the One Enthroned

64

Chapter 4. Hildegard and the Hexameron

93

Chapter 5. The Cosmic Egg and the Liturgy

128

Chapter 6. The Edifice of Salvation and Its Virtues

158

Chapter 7. F ­ all and Recovery in the Ordo virtutum 185 Chapter 8. Endings and Time Beyond Time

224

viii Contents

Appendix 1. Locations of Paintings, Flourished Initials, Headings, and Quire Signatures in Wiesbaden 1

261

Appendix 2. Scribes Responsible for Texts and Headings in MS W, Wiesbaden 1, Illuminated Scivias, from Black-­and-­W hite Photos

263

Appendix 3. Texts for the Office of All Saints, with Commentary

265

Appendix 4. Smaller Dramatic/Musical Units as Found in the Ordo virtutum 271 Notes 273 Bibliography 323 General Index

345

Index of Chants and Chant Texts from the Liturgy, Symphonia and the Ordo virtutum 351 Index of Scripture

353

Index of Manuscripts

355

Acknowl­edgments

357

Color plates follow page 174

ILLUSTR ATIONS

Figures Fig. Int.1. An example of Scribe 6 in the collection of Hildegard’s Letters. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 34r

5

Fig. Int.2. The responsory “O uos imitatores” for confessors, as copied on a blank page. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 40v

6

Fig. 2.1. Communion. Scivias II.vi, from W, fol. 86r, text by Scribe A (Scribe 2 in the manuscript)

54

Fig. 2.2. Examples of Scribe 1 and Scribe 2. W, fol. 59r, in Scivias II.iii.34

59

Fig. 2.3. Examples of Scribe 2 and Scribe 3. W, fol. 195v, in Scivias III.ix.14–16

60

Fig. 3.1. Portrait of Hildegard and Volmar in Scivias, preface: (a) W, fol. 1r, col. A, il, text as copied by Scribe 1; (b) Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Salem X.16, fol. 7r, detail

66

Fig. 3.2. The One Enthroned. Scivias I.i. Text as copied by Scribe 1, from W, fol. 2r, col. B, detail

82

Fig. 4.1. The Trinity in the Unity. Scivias II.ii, from W, fol. 47r

95

Fig. 4.2. Creation and Redemption. Scivias II.i, from W, fol. 41v

104

Fig. 4.3. The Fall. Scivias I.ii, from W, fol. 4r

115

x Illustrations

Fig. 4.4. Creation and the Fall. Frontispiece of Scivias from Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Salem X.16, fol. 2r

124

Fig. 4.5. Creation and the Fall. The Zwiefalten martyrology, Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. hist. 2o 415, fol. 17r

125

Fig. 5.1. The Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii, from W, fol. 14r

129

Fig. 5.2. Twelve Heads of the Winds, from a treatise on astronomy, twelfth c­ entury: (a) Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodl. 614, fol. 34v; (b) windheads from Liber floridus, Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92, fol. 24r

132

Fig. 5.3. Two twelfth-­century renderings of the cosmos. Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MS 73, fol. 2v

136

Fig. 5.4. The cosmos with a T-­O map, from the Liber floridus: (a) Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92, fol. 94v; (b) Isidore, Etymologies, a T-­O map, mid-­twelfth c­ entury, Bibliothèque Méjanes, Aix-­en-­Provence MS 0025 (0914), p. 293r

138

Fig. 5.5. Satan. Scivias II.vii, from W, fol. 115v

145

Fig. 5.6. Communion. Scivias II.vi, from W, fol. 86v

149

Fig. 5.7. Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii, from W, fol. 14r, detail

150

Fig. 6.1. Pillar of the Word of God. Scivias III.iv, from W, fol. 145v

170

Fig. 6.2. Knowledge of God. Scivias III.iv, from W, fol. 146r

172

Fig. 6.3. The T ­ riple Wall. Scivias III.vi, from W, fol. 161v

173

Fig. 6.4. The Tower of the Church. Scivias III.ix, from W, fol. 192r

176

Fig. 6.5. The Son of Man. Scivias III.x, from W, fol. 203v

182

Fig. 8.1. The End of Time. Scivias III.xii, from W, fol. 225r

241

Illustrations xi

Plates Plate I. The Sacrament of Communion. Scivias II.vi. E, fol. 86r Plate II. Hildegard and Volmar. Scivias, preface. E, fol. 1r, col. A, detail Plate III. The One Enthroned. Scivias I.i. E, fol. 2r, col. B, detail Plate IV. The Moon on Nov. 1, 1112 and the Moon in the Cosmic Egg Plate V. The Trinity in the Unity. Scivias, II.ii. E, fol. 47r Plate VI. The Trinity, Rothschild Canticles. New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 404, fol. 100r Plate VII. Creation and Redemption. Scivias II.i. E, fol. 41v Plate VIII. The Fall of Lucifer and His Minions. Scivias III.i. E, fol. 123r Plate IX. The Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii. E, fol. 14r Plate X. The Rupertsberg antependium, early thirteenth c­ entury. Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire Plate XI. The Edifice of Salvation. Scivias III.ii. E, fol. 130v Plate XII. Initial of “Adspiciens” for Advent; leaf from an antiphoner, ca. 1140–60. Cleveland Museum of Art MS 1949.202 Plate XIII. The Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior. Scivias III.viii. E, fol. 178r Plate XIV. The Symphony of the Blessed. Scivias III.xiii. E, fol. 229r Plate XV. The Son of Man. Scivias III.x. E, fol. 203v Plate XVI. The End of Time. Scivias III.xii. E, fol. 225r

xii Illustrations

­Music Examples Ex. 4.1. Antiphon: “Laus trinitati.” D, fol. 157r

98

Ex. 4.2. Phrase from “O splendidissima gemma.” D, fol. 154r–­v

107

Ex. 4.3. Antiphon: “O splendidissima gemma.” D fol. 154r–­v

109

Ex. 4.4. Antiphon: “O gloriosissimi.” D, fol. 159r

118

Ex. 4.5. Chains of thirds employed in “O gloriosissimi”; e final, with the octave e-­b-ee as major pitches and resting points in the musical rhe­toric.

120

Ex. 6.1. Antiphon: “O uirtus sapientie.” R, fol. 466r

180

Ex. 7.1. (a) Opening of the responsory “Qui sunt hi” as found in a twelfth-­century antiphoner. Austria, Klosterneuberg, 1012, fol. 72r (Feast of St. Matthew and other Apostles as well as All Saints); (b) Opening query of the Prophets from the Ordo virtutum. R fol. 478v

200

Ex. 7.2. (a) The virtues’ opening from the Ordo virtutum is related to yet transforms the prophets’ m ­ usic. R, fol. 278v; (b) “Felix Anima” (opening), which mirrors the virtues’ opening. R, fol. 278v

202

Ex. 7.3. Anima, weighed down, is conquered (opening). R, fol. 279r

202

Ex. 7.4. “O plangens uox.” R, fol. 479r

204

Ex. 7.5. From Anima’s lament. R, fol. 480v

211

Ex. 7.6. Anima begins to sing in D. R, fol. 480v

211

Ex. 7.7. Anima makes the 5th. R, fol. 480v

212

Ex. 7.8. The virtues beckon. R, fol. 480v

212

Ex. 7.9. “O uiuens fons.” R, fol. 481r

213

Ex. 7.10. Anima makes the octave. R, fol. 481r

215

Illustrations xiii

Ex. 7.11. Opening of “O nobilissima uiriditas,” last chant text in Scivias, compared to the opening of “Ave Regina caelorum”

217

Ex. 7.12. “Aue regina celorum.” Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 12044, fol. 177v

217

Ex. 7.13. Pos­si­ble prophetic foreshadowing. R, fol. 480r

219

Ex. 7.14. Victory is defined in C. R, fol. 480

220

Ex. 7.15. Victory over Satan in C, with the word “gaudete” compared to “gaude”

221

Ex. 7.16. Virtues to Anima, still felix, but nearing her moment of fall (opening of the play). R, fol. 478v, compared to the statement at the end of the play, R. fol. 481v

222

Ex. 8.1. “In principio.” R, fol. 481v

228

Ex. 8.2. Chains of thirds in the final melisma

230

Ex. 8.3. The final melisma of “In principio”

230

Ex. 8.4. “O eterne deus.” D, fol. 153r

232

Ex. 8.5. From the responsory for angels (“in fonte aspicitis”: you behold in the fountain). R, fol. 468v

251

Ex. 8.6. From the responsory for Patriarchs and Prophets. R, fol. 469r (through the rushing way)

252

Ex. 8.7. From the responsory for Apostles “O lucidissima apostolorum turba.” R, fol. 469v

252

Ex. 8.8. Final melisma from the responsory “Vos flores” for martyrs. R, fol. 470r

253

Ex. 8.9. From the responsory for confessors. R, fol. 470v

253

Ex. 8.10. “Hodie aperuit.” D, fol. 154v

256

­TABLES

­ able 2.1. Manuscripts containing Hildegard’s trilogy copied T on the Rupertsberg

50

­ able 2.2. The four most prevalent Rupertsberg scribes and their work T on the Trilogy

58

­Table 3.1. Musical settings of “O Jerusalem” compared

87

­ able 3.2. “O Jerusalem,” with strophes or­ga­nized by m T ­ usic and musical repetitions

89

­ able 7.1. Named and costumed virtues in the Edifice T of Salvation (Scivias III) and in the Ordo virtutum 191 ­ able 8.1. Responsories for the Feast of All Saints, and the Common T of the Saints or feast from which the first eight ­were borrowed

244

­Table 8.2. Scivias chants

247

ABBR EVIATIONS

Sigla of Manuscripts Ber

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Theol. lat. fol. 727

Cit

Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 683

D

Dendermonde, St.-­Pieters & Paulusabdij, Abteilbibliothek, MS Cod. 9

E Rüdesheim/Eibingen, Benediktinerinnenabtei St. Hildegard, MS 1 G

Ghent, Universiteit Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 241

R

Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 2

T

Trier, Seminarbibliothek, MS 68

V

Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 311

W

Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 1 (now missing)

Z

Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253

Other Abbreviations AH

Analecta Hymnica

BHL

Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, ed. Socii Bollandiana, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1986)

BL

British Library

BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France

xvi Abbreviations

CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis CCSL

Corpus Christianorum Series Latina

EV

Exhortatio virtutum

LDO

Liber divinorum operum

LVM

Liber vite meritorum

OV

Ordo virtutum

PL

Patrologia Latina

NOTE ON CONVENTIONS

Psalms have been numbered following the Vulgate. Pitches have been designated according to the Guidonian system: Γ, A–­G, a–­g, aa–gg, where c is the equivalent of M ­ iddle C. In the musical examples I have transcribed Hildegard’s m ­ usic in the treble clef, as the m ­ usic was originally designed for w ­ omen to sing. Hence some notes are outside the Guidonian hand; the octave including high c is aaa–­ggg. However, specific pitch designation (e.g., aa = 440) did not exist in the M ­ iddle Ages, and as long as the relationship between pitches is maintained, the ­music can be situated wherever it is most comfortable for the singers.

INTRODUCTION

Before the Fall of Adam, the heavens ­were immovable and did not turn, but ­a fter the Fall, they gradually started to move and to spin. On the Last Day they ­w ill again come to rest, as it was at the beginning before the Fall. [Ante causum Ade firmamentum inmobile fuit et non circumuoluebatur, post casum autem eius cepit moueri et circumuolui; sed post nouissimum diem inmobile stabit, ut in prima creatione anti casum Ade fuit.] —­Cause et cure, I.27

This eight-­chapter study relates to the ways in which Christian theologians and scientists in the first half of the twelfth ­century thought about the universe, not only in their treatises and scientific calculations but also in their ecclesiology, the visual arts, ­music, poetry, and drama. It is only through accounting for ­t hese several dimensions of understanding that the best sense of the ­whole can be achieved.1 And for this work, the Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen is a unique and skillful guide. The systematic view she designed of the cosmos, its creation and workings, is far removed from modern understandings, rooted as it is in her times and place, but it is dynamic and resonates with con­temporary issues in a surprising number of ways. To know her views both as expressed in her first major treatise and in its illuminations is to gain other­wise unattainable knowledge about the past and about medieval cosmological investigations in their multidisciplinary splendor. In a larger sense, it relates directly to the history of science, offering a view from the first half of the twelfth ­century, a time of change and exploration, of reworking past understandings, and of re­nais­sance. The book shows how science, theology, the arts, and the liturgy functioned together in the first half of the twelfth ­century.2

2 Introduction

This book is about creation and cosmos in Hildegard of Bingen’s illuminated Scivias.3 It has a companion proj­ect as well, a unique digitized model of the cosmos and its stages of creation developed in collaboration with Christian Jara, closely related to the ways she depicted ­t hese and wrote about them, with relevant ­music, and visuals taken from her illuminated Scivias.4 Making the digital model forced us to take the images apart and to think about their intervisuality.5 In addition to their relationships with each other, the images offer a depth of meaning that is pos­si­ble through their situations in Hildegard’s other works. The deep caverns of thought sustaining several of the images are explored ­here. Although this book stands on its own, in­de­pen­dent of the digital model and its website, the book also can work interactively with it. In the book I also introduce the work of many other thinkers, from antiquity to the pre­sent time, whose writings relate to Hildegard’s model of the universe, situating it both more broadly and in greater detail. Chapter 1 pre­sents a brief overview of cosmological understanding up to the first half of the twelfth ­century: Scivias was written in the fifth de­cade of the ­century, in the 1140s. Chapter 2 is a study of Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain 1, the now missing illuminated Scivias prepared on the Rupertsberg, with attention to its scribes and to scribal practices on the Rupertsberg. The third chapter of this book relates Hildegard’s formation as a nun to selected liturgical understandings she would have experienced early in life and their cosmological under­pinnings, with emphasis on the ways in which Scivias is informed by the Feast of All Saints, the day of the nuns’ consecration. Study of the first two paintings in the treatise suggests what Scivias and the images would have symbolized to a community of Benedictine nuns in the first half of the twelfth ­century. Chapter 4 offers an analy­sis of the six stages of cosmic creation, the hexameron, as Hildegard understood them, beginning with her beliefs about time before time and ­matter before ­matter. Her hexameron is rooted in her own creation as a consecrated virgin, divinely commissioned to write down her visions. The model she created of the cosmos, depicted most graphically in Scivias, Book 1, vision iii, is the subject of Chapter 5; this contains her work as an artistic designer in situating her own time and place within her cosmography. Chapter 6 focuses on the strategies Hildegard employed in Scivias to build her Edifice of Salvation, way station by way station. Chapter 7 is about the ­battle embodied within her notated play Ordo virtutum, with emphasis on the voice of prophecy and Hildegard’s role as a teacher and leader of a monastic community. Her play and her chants are ways of bringing ­people deeply into her own closeness to God, a communal mysticism.6 Chapter 8 demonstrates how the final chant of the play relates to Hildegard’s view of the

Introduction 3

cosmos and the end of time, and then moves to her final painting and what comes ­after the God-­given purposes of the universe have been fulfilled. Ideas in Chapter 8 return to the themes of All Saints discussed in Chapter 3, with study of the chant texts also found at the close of the treatise. Hildegard’s cosmos has many meanings for it relates to the Church (in heaven and on earth), to the sacraments, to her play Ordo virtutum, to her views of the meanings of the universe (its beginnings and its inevitable end), to the nature of time, and to the place of ­human beings within the universe, and to the workings of her own monastic community. Basic to this understanding is m ­ usic, especially as sung by p ­ eople as they worship. In Hildegard’s thought scheme, liturgical song is cosmological. In this book I argue that Scivias is the setting for Hildegard’s initial understandings of the universe, and the place of her chants and her play within it are crucial to the ways in which she thought the universe was formed, continued to exist, and would be remade at the end. In order to proceed with this complicated hypothesis, I need to clear the deck ­here briefly regarding three subjects of central importance and my ways of treating them: chants, artworks, and scientific writings. Although Hildegard has been much in the news of late, and the publications on her have increased greatly in recent de­cades, much remains to be said, especially in regard to the unique survivals her materials offer for understanding the lives of w ­ omen religious in the Latin ­Middle Ages.

Scivias and Hildegard’s Chants Most of Hildegard’s lyrical compositions are difficult to date, although b ­ ecause a set of fourteen of their texts is included at the close of Scivias, it seems certain that a significant number of them ­were already finished by the time the treatise itself was completed, around 1151.7 I have drawn upon many of Hildegard’s chant lyr­ics in this study, even though some, including the Ursula chants, ­were certainly composed ­a fter Scivias was complete. I have also included my own transcriptions of several chants made from the Riesencodex and the Dendermonde codex, the bases for discussion of how the musical settings underscore the meanings of the texts.8 An overview of the chronology for the songs is difficult to produce with certainty; some argue that the texts w ­ ere written first and l­ater set to m ­ usic. Hildegard denies this. In a letter that quotes her, Guibert of Gembloux, who became her secretary late in life, describes Hildegard’s compositional pro­cess. She hears the melodies as parts of her visions, remembers them, and ­later sets words to them so they can be sung as part of worship:

4 Introduction

Moreover, returning to ordinary life from the melody of that internal concert, she frequently takes delight in causing ­t hose sweet modes which she learns and remembers in that spiritual harmony to reverberate with the sound of voices, and, remembering God, making a festive day from what she remembers of that spiritual m ­ usic, and often, delighted to find t­ hose same melodies in their resounding to be more pleasing than ­t hose of common h ­ uman effort, makes words for them for the praise of God and in honor of the saints, to be sung publicly in church.9 As Jutta von Sponheim died in 1136, and Hildegard was her immediate successor as head of the female community on the Disibodenberg, she would have been in charge of and therefore capable of introducing m ­ usic into the community for nearly fifteen years before the move of her community of Benedictine nuns to the Rupertsberg.10 It is probable that she had already produced chants and her play in ­t hese fruitful years, and that a desire for greater liturgical autonomy apart from the community of Benedictine monks at the Disibodenberg may have been one of the reasons for her wish to move the community. Her liturgical texts have a power­f ul Mariological cast, and her play was written for ­women to sing and emphasizes the role of consecrated w ­ omen in salvation history. In any case, we can be fairly certain that at least the Scivias chants and the play Ordo virtutum (the OV) and the truncated version the Exhortatio virtutum (EV) at the end of the treatise w ­ ere already composed by the time Scivias itself neared completion in 1151. ­W hether or not this state of completion included texts only or both texts and ­music cannot be said for sure, but I ­will argue that the close interconnectedness between text and ­music in most of Hildegard’s compositions argues for the latter. Many of the Scivias chants would have been ideal for the program of altars established at the Disibodenberg in the years before Hildegard and Volmar departed in the very late 1140s.11 We do not know for sure what altars Hildegard established in her community’s new church, although surely Rupert was a major dedicatee. Hildegard’s letters, the state of which is outlined briefly in Chapter 2, are the most useful ele­ments for attempting to date the early workings of vari­ous scribes in the scriptorium on the Rupertsberg. At least one of t­ hese scribes was previously active at the Disibodenberg (Figure Int.1). Among the letters in the collection at Stuttgart (MS Z) someone copied one of Hildegard’s Scivias chants, “O uos imitatores,” a responsory for confessors (Figure Int.2).12 The composition is skillfully copied h ­ ere, without hesitation, and in the notational style that is used on the Rupertsberg and found in both collections of Hildegard’s chants in manuscripts D and R, prepared in the last de­cade or so of Hildegard’s life.13 It is the script of

Fig. Int.1. An example of Scribe 6  in the collection of Hildegard’s letters. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 34r.

Fig. Int.2. The responsory “O uos imitatores” for confessors, as copied on a blank page. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z), fol. 40v.

Introduction 7

the text rather than the notation that is particularly telling, however. This hand is quite close in style to the earliest surviving hands in the letter manuscripts, especially to the so-­called Disibodenberg scribe, Scribe 6. Although the scribe of the chant text is not other­wise found among ­those in the letter collection Z, it can be distinguished in several of its features from the writing style of several early Rupertsberg scribes as well. The roundness of the letters and the shape of the ampersand are the most telling. The characteristics of this script point to a date for the fragment prob­ably from around the year 1150. ­Whether it was copied ­either just before or soon ­after 1150 is not pos­si­ble to say, nor can it be proved if it was made at the Disibodenberg or the Rupertsberg. But from this evidence and our study of the scriptorium in Chapter 2, we can strengthen our belief that indeed Hildegard had written m ­ usic for at least one of the Scivias chants by the time she had finished the treatise, and most likely before this time. From this we can assume that t­ here w ­ ere other notated copies of her compositions as well and at this relatively early date.14 The next de­cade or so a­ fter the completion of Scivias in 1151 must have been very fruitful years for Hildegard’s compositions, and the works surely would have included the ­music for St. Rupert and for many other local saints, as well as other works for the Virgin Mary.15 The three chants for St. Disibod ­were included in a letter dated by Van Acker to before 1155, but this does not prove when she wrote them; it could have been ­earlier. Hildegard visited Trier in 1160, and so her works for saints venerated ­there (Matthias, Eucharius, and Maximin) may date from then at least, although ­these too could have been ­earlier. Hildegard’s chants for John the Evangelist have been linked to the Liber divinorum operum (LDO) and its authorizing vision, a work completed in the last de­cade of her life. And, lastly, the relics of St. Ursula ­were obtained on the Rupertsberg between 1167 and 1173, and so this is the range of years posited as a pos­si­ble time for the composition of the large set of Hildegard’s chants dedicated to her and her companions.16 In her discussion of the chronology of the chants found in the critical edition of the poems, Barbara Newman calls attention to the statement Hildegard makes about her work in the time between when she finished Scivias and began the Liber vite meritorum (LVM), her second major theological treatise: “the same [divine] vision showed me how to expound the subtleties of dif­fer­ent kinds of creatures; answers and admonitions to many ­people both small and ­great; the harmonious ­music of heavenly revelations; and certain other expositions, on which I worked for eight years ­after the [Scivias] visions, burdened by g­ reat sickness and hard physical ­labor.”17 Newman points out that the title of the collection presented h ­ ere is never used in the surviving manuscripts of the chants; thus it may refer to an ­earlier collection, the so-­called “Miscellany,” which is also discussed by Newman

8 Introduction

in the critical edition of Hildegard’s minor works, and which she believes represents a ­middle period in Hildegard’s output of compositions.18 What­ever the dates may be for Hildegard’s chants and their vari­ous chronological layers, it is my belief that most of the lyr­ics and the play are rooted in Hildegard’s cosmological understandings and that she used them to draw worshippers (first and foremost her own community) more deeply into her sense of the liturgy as a cosmic exercise, the very nature of which was not only mirrored allegorically by the cosmos but also effecting change within it, hour by hour and day by day. Although Hildegard’s view of the cosmos and her graphic sense of its diagrammatic plan changed over time, still her first treatise, Scivias, established the foundation for her other statements about the universe and its meanings, and therefore established the ways in which her lyr­ics and their m ­ usic function as well. It is for this reason that I w ­ ill sometimes cite chant texts that may well have been created ­after Scivias was completed, although discussion is focused on this, her first major theological treatise, and the chant texts included within it, including the play in both versions. In any case, the copy of Scivias to be studied in this book was part of a ­later campaign of manuscript production on the Rupertsberg and so remained at the forefront of Hildegard’s attention—­and that of her community as well.19

The Paintings in the Illuminated Scivias The works of art found in Wiesbaden 1 have not yet received the systematic discussion they deserve from art historians.20 It is difficult to commit to studying paintings that survive at pre­sent only in copies. Th ­ ere has also been disagreement about the degree to which Hildegard herself was involved in the design and production of the paintings. Madeline Caviness, in a review of the two book-­length studies of the artworks that appeared in 1998, challenges the idea that Hildegard was not involved in the production of the artworks in Wiesbaden 1: “if it is to be argued that Hildegard had nothing to do with the pictures in the Rupertsberg Scivias, some tangible alternative has to be suggested, with a workplace, intellectual context, and other extant productions, and not some phantom atelier. As it is, the unique characteristics of the lost Scivias, so well elucidated by Suzuki, suggest the pictures w ­ ere created in unique circumstances.”21 The pre­sent study is of Hildegard’s explanation of the cosmos in her treatise Scivias, her poetry, her drama, and the artistic works that are directly engaged with the subject. The digital model that Christian Jara and I have made of the cosmos as Hildegard envisioned its creation and its workings has required close study of sev-

Introduction 9

eral of the images, and I have provided the results of the years of investigation ­here. We have had to take the images apart and reconstitute them for our digital work, and a ­great deal has been learned in the pro­cess. This book is not a systematic study of the Scivias paintings, much as one is needed: I am a liturgical historian and musicologist, not an art historian. Rather, I suggest the kinds of work that can be fruitful as the paintings are repositioned one by one in the context of her other works, and in all the disciplines upon which Hildegard drew in her theological enterprise. Study of the paintings demands careful analy­sis of detail, not only of what they are (or ­were) but also of how they created their meanings within Hildegard’s community, where the manuscript texts ­were copied, and where they ­were guarded as trea­sures by subsequent generations of nuns. My study of the photo­graphs of the original illuminated Scivias presented in Chapter 2 offers more reasons for believing in her direct involvement with this manuscript. The more one knows about the Scivias paintings, the clearer it becomes that only Hildegard herself could have designed ­t hese works; she must have consulted closely with the artists too, whoever they w ­ ere. It seems that sketches of the artworks must have come first and have been the inspiration of e­ very chapter in her treatise.22 I believe the paintings may first have been worked out as embroideries from Hildegard’s sketches, although this cannot be proven. It would make sense, as the w ­ omen w ­ ere craftspeople in this art, and the monastery had a specially designated room for ­t hese activities.23 As Jeffrey Hamburger has pointed out, a sermon by the fourteenth-­century mystic Johannes Tauler takes as its subject a work that he saw displayed on the wall of the refectory at the Rupertsberg. Hamburger says: “Given the communal character of the refectory, where sermons such as Tauler’s may well have been read out to the nuns during their meals, one can imagine e­ ither a wall painting, large enough to be vis­i­ble at a distance, or, no less likely, a wall-­hanging, perhaps an embroidery.”24 ­Every one of the paintings in the illuminated Scivias has been placed in a frame, and t­ hese frames are of dif­fer­ent designs. The message is that ­t hese are works of art. But they are dynamic too, with the ele­ments often spilling outside of their frames, such as the feet of characters, scrolls, and the top of the cosmic egg. ­These are visions, too, that cannot be contained by ­human artifice. In addition many of the backgrounds of the paintings show cosmographic details, demonstrating that the paintings are part of an extraterrestrial comprehension. ­A fter many years of study, I believe that Hildegard prob­ably would have wanted her third treatise, the LDO, to have been illuminated, and, of course, it was copied with paintings in the third de­cade of the thirteenth ­century. Hildegard ran out of time to produce illuminated copies of her other major treatises, but all

10 Introduction

three are visionary and based on seeing and hearing, and they cry out for the treatment given to Scivias in Wiesbaden 1. Hildegard was very much a visual thinker, and her ­music and poetry also draw upon what is ­imagined while singing and listening. One of the greatest difficulties in dealing with her visionary material has to do with ­whether or not what she saw was a product of being a sufferer from migraines. In her excellent evaluation of this idea and its historiography, Katherine Foxhall has suggested that to brand Hildegard’s visions in this way might be the result of anachronistic reasoning about the phenomenon. Many of us, myself included, have long suffered from migraine headaches, but to have the kinds of visions Hildegard underwent does not follow as a ­matter of course.25 Changes in Hildegard’s thought regarding the cosmos and its nature can be observed most clearly by comparing Scivias to her third major theological treatise, Liber divinorum operum (LDO).26 Completed in the last years of her life, the LDO is permeated by her interpretation of the cosmos as is Scivias but pre­sents a greatly revised understanding of the model offered in the first major treatise. From time to time I w ­ ill reference this l­ater work, but it r­ eally requires its own study as far as cosmology is concerned; the digital model we have made at the University of Notre Dame of the Hildegardian cosmos is completely based on Scivias, on the paintings I believe Hildegard designed to accompany it, and on Hildegard’s own explanations of cosmic action as found in this par­tic­u­lar work. It would be pos­si­ble to make yet another spectacular digital model for planetaria using the paintings in the thirteenth-­century illuminated copy of the LDO, and the result would be completely dif­fer­ent from our own visual pre­sen­ta­tion. The painted LDO, however, was not made on the Rupertsberg, and it was produced de­cades a­ fter Hildegard’s death. The same degree of control that Hildegard had over the illuminated Scivias did not occur in the production of this manuscript, and the ways in which the art and the theology of the LDO ­were interrelated ­will not be broached in this study.

The Scientific Writings One of the major prob­lems one meets when thinking about Hildegard’s understanding of science, including cosmology, has to do with two treatises centering on science and medicine attributed to her, the shorter Physica and the more expansive Cause et cure. In this study, I have had to make some difficult decisions about the use of t­ hese materials, both of which have been edited, translated, and commented upon at length in recent scholarship (­after having been somewhat neglected in comparison to her other works).27 Neither of ­t hese treatises is found in

Introduction 11

Hildegard’s collected writings in the Riesencodex. Hildegard mentions her scientific work at the opening of her second theological treatise, Liber vite meritorum; Volmar mentions it in his letter to the community at the time of what was thought to be her impending death in 1170.28 But in both cases only one work is mentioned, not two. The most detailed analy­sis of the situation to date is that found in the introduction to Laurence Moulinier’s edition of Cause et cure. The manuscript tradition as described by Moulinier is strikingly dif­fer­ent for the two treatises. Physica survives in five complete manuscripts and five fragments, none of which date from the twelfth ­century, and the treatise is usually presumed to be au­t hen­ tic.29 Cause et cure, on the other hand, survives in but one complete thirteenth-­ century source now in Copenhagen (Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Ny kgl. saml. 90b Fol) and in a one-­page thirteenth-­century fragment now in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Lat. Qu. 674, fol. 103r–­v). Peter Dronke’s masterful analy­sis of the Berlin fragment is revelatory. He treats the contents of the work, dif­fer­ent from but related to Cause et cure, as au­t hen­tic and offering a bird’s-­eye view of how Volmar and Hildegard may have collaborated in producing her works: The ­whole . . . ​is essentially a series of disjointed notes, loosely assembled, which Hildegard’s secretary, Volmar, must have set down as they came into Hildegard’s mind. The notes do contain moments of brilliance, but also some sentences that are more banal, and a few that are on the face of it absurd . . . ​30 But the notes remained pensées which Hildegard had not yet had the opportunity to order and expand. The frequent insertion of the word quere . . . ​prob­ably indicated places where Volmar wanted to ask Hildegard to elaborate what she meant to say.31 Laurence Moulinier provides evidence suggesting ­there ­were other copies of Cause et cure that no longer survive. Her conclusions about the authenticity of the work are deliberately tentative, but she does point to the de­cades immediately ­after Hildegard’s death, when several well-­meaning men took up the cause of preparing her works for an eventual push for canonization. It may well be that the treatise was compiled during that time, an expansion of and commentary on Hildegard’s scientific thought. As the notes to Moulinier’s edition of Cause et cure demonstrate, the work resonates in a ­great number of passages with Hildegard’s demonstrably au­then­tic writings and certainly discusses many of her most favored themes.32 The numbers of sources referenced in the work are nothing short of extraordinary, pressing Moulinier to write a section concerning the reception of the

12 Introduction

ideas then coming in from newly translated sources. At this point, it seems that it would be a greater fault not to cite Cause et cure in this study of cosmology in Scivias, in spite of the fact that the authenticity of Cause et cure cannot be proven at the pre­sent time. And so I have made use of both scientific works in this study, and of the Berlin Fragment as well, if only to demonstrate certain nuances in Hildegard’s thought (or in the immediate reception of her thought).

Conclusion In general, this eight-­chapter study relates to the ways in which Christian theologians and scientists in the first half of the twelfth ­century thought about the universe, not only in their treatises and scientific calculations but also in their ecclesiology, especially as manifested in the liturgy, the visual arts, m ­ usic, poetry, and drama.33 All ­these dimensions are requisite if scholars are ever able to grasp the complexities of understanding regarding the cosmos in the first half of the twelfth ­century, and, in my view, a number of finely grained studies of individuals are needed at the pre­ sent to gain control of this dynamic period. For this work, Hildegard has a special contribution to make. She designed a working system of how the cosmos was created, why it was created, and how it turns, and her work is deeply rooted in her understanding of chant and the liturgy. B ­ ecause it is difficult to know the specific sources of her thought, as she does not mention the authors who influenced her and the channels of influence through which her ideas w ­ ere transmitted, I have placed special emphasis on the liturgy, and on texts we can be certain that she knew, as foundational. As a result of Hildegard’s training and her mode of living, the ideas in Scivias are far dif­fer­ent from anything that medieval scientists or modern scientists and theologians would advance. But her system has a special kind of beauty b ­ ecause of its multidimensionality and b ­ ecause of Hildegard’s ability to create intertextuality and intervisuality in this unique treatise. The usefulness of Hildegard’s understanding goes beyond even this: she wrote at a time when the fields of science and theology w ­ ere part of a grander scheme of knowing, and to see how and why this was the case can be both unsettling and encouraging.

CHAPTER 1

The Cosmological Background

The heavens provide a unique and unchanging backdrop for the unfolding of ­human history.1 To compare reactions to this fixity is an impor­tant way of looking at the differences between the ages, providing a constant for studying modes of perception and belief. The eye is a telescope, and ­until recent centuries, it was the only one available. Ancient and medieval ­people looked to the skies, using myth, legend, the arts, religion, and science to explore fundamental questions about the universe and what it means to be a part of it. The atmosphere has changed dramatically over time, but stars observable by the naked eye (around fifteen thousand in number) have not. Some distant stars have faded and died and millions of new stars and galaxies have been discovered by modern p ­ eople with ever more power­f ul instruments, but ­earlier observers could not have seen ­t hese newly discovered details, lacking our sophisticated help. Instead in ­earlier centuries, ­people knew that the comets come and go and have been able to predict eclipses since the seventh ­century b.c., both phenomena interpreted as portends of oncoming disasters.2 And still ­every h ­ uman who walks out at night regards what her ancestors saw thousands of years before and must make of it what she ­will. The heavens are a touchstone for cultural differences and transformation over time. Cosmology, the study of the origin, evolution, and f­ uture existence of the universe, and cosmogeny, the study of creation, have not changed ­either in their primary goals of understanding and explanation. Th ­ ere is g­ reat ambiguity between the two terms and I w ­ ill generally use cosmology as all-­encompassing, including the stages by which the universe came into being and what we know and have known of it, and cosmography, more narrowly, to mean the mapping of the cosmos. What has changed over time are methods of working and ways of exploring the stages of creation of the universe and its pre­sent nature and predictable ­f uture. Cosmologists in any age, our own included, look for systems, for meaningful ways to or­ga­nize what they know and do not know about the universe. Each system

14 Chapter 1

reveals a g­ reat deal of information about both the time in which it was created and the state of science at that time, and what was thought about the place of the earth and of h ­ umans in the larger scheme of t­ hings. At vari­ous points in time t­ here are ­those who undertake the mathe­matics of observation and ­those who focus on what it all means in a humanistic sense, and often the twain do not meet. At other periods of history, the two ways of studying converge. So it is that understandings of the stars and planets and explanations of creation long have been linked, as phi­los­o­phers, scientists, theologians, artists, composers, and poets probe into the deepest and most fundamental questions of existence. How old is the universe and how was it formed? How long w ­ ill it endure? Are we alone?3 For ancient p ­ eople, cosmology was often holistic, including not just the observable stars but links to animals and p ­ eople themselves and their ways of being, which w ­ ere then reflected in writings, systems of symbols, arts, religion, and architecture, leading to several multidisciplinary and more holistic perspectives in the pre­sent age, as well as many ideas about extraterrestrials and exoplanets. The field of archaeoastronomy, for example, proceeds on the premise that understanding the varied views of the cosmos held throughout the ages, and comparing them, provides an impor­tant way of knowing about the past.4 Archaeoastronomy blends the study of material objects and cosmology. Scholars explore the history of how h ­ umans joined understandings of both to make cohesive statements about the observable world, sometimes offering the only evidence that is available for prehistoric cultures. This evidence can reveal what the cosmos and its observable workings meant for the social order from birth to death.5 In their overview of the field, David H. Kelley and Eugene F. Milone treat a range of subjects from the ancient world, all related to ways of observing and studying the heavens and of making that study manifest in one way or another. Their work encompasses paleolithic cultures, megalithic cultures, antecedents of the Western tradition, African cultures, Indo-­Iranian cultures, China, ­Korea, and Japan, Oceanic cultures, Mesoamerica, Amer­i­ca north of Mexico, South American cultures, the descent of the gods and the purpose of ancient astronomy, and calendars and the spread of astronomical ideas.6 This field is not just about scientific understanding but also about culture, and ways of life, for e­ very society superimposes its understanding of who and what it is and what it ­will be upon its par­tic­u­lar map of the stars. This is true, of course, of the con­temporary world: changing views of the “big bang” and when it took place and what it means are part of the everyday framework of most ­people’s lives, scientists or not. In our own culture, scientists predict our ­futures based on what they know about the stars, and they make warnings about their natures. Studies of



The Cosmological Background 15

the planet-­a ltering asteroid that struck the earth around 65.5 million years ago have engendered models of past destruction, and what it would be like should such an event occur again.7 Some scientists argue for volcanic activity that paved the way for this second round of extinctions via the asteroid.8 As a result of scientific work and popularization of its varied findings (especially via the internet), an emphasis on cataclysmic events and fears about them pre­sent t­ oday can resemble obsessive imaginings of the end of time found among medieval Christians. Perhaps it is part of ­human nature to have terrors about the end of it all. Hildegard certainly did, and she developed a complex understanding of the apocalypse rooted in a larger cosmology to help gain control of her fears and to link the actions of individuals to the workings of the cosmos. The subject of archaeoastronomy is vast, and the need for ­humans to be able to memorize patterns found within the stars for a variety of purposes has long been paramount in e­ very ancient culture. I suggest that the Latin M ­ iddle Ages should be included in this subject, and that the ways in which ancient ideas about the universe (its beginnings, its end, and its turnings) w ­ ere inherited and transformed are crucial for knowing any ­century, but most particularly the twelfth, a time of ­great change in cosmological understanding. Hildegard inherited a vast legacy of scientific understanding about the cosmos, and her treatises demonstrate that she was deeply engaged with vari­ous parts of it, including works with cosmological diagrams. It is also clear that her ideas w ­ ere changing as she learned more and as new scientific works w ­ ere starting to become more widely known in her region in the third quarter of the twelfth ­century. Our study is an exercise in archaeoastronomy, for it takes what Hildegard knew about the cosmos and interrelates this with her theological explorations, and ultimately argues the fundamental importance of both for a larger understanding of this period of time. Offered below is an introductory overview of creation and cosmology as the topic was known and studied in western Eu­rope in the period before Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) wrote her treatise Scivias (1141–51). This study, which leads up to the first de­cades of the twelfth ­century, provides a context for ideas Hildegard might have held about creation and cosmos, with attention in par­tic­u­lar to the illuminated copy that was compiled and copied, at least for the most part, in her scriptorium on the Rupertsberg. The purpose is to see more generally and in an introductory way how she and this massive illuminated compendium fit into the larger scheme of t­ hings, pointing also to what is unique about her for the history of comparative cosmology. Many of the ideas mentioned that predate Hildegard or w ­ ere found in the writings of her most significant contemporaries ­will reoccur in the chapters to follow as I examine the stages of creation and their meanings in

16 Chapter 1

her treatise. However, several figures of importance have been left out in this prefatory study, and all are glossed over too briefly, by reason of necessity, for the subject is exceedingly complex. ­There is also ­little mention of ­later studies to demonstrate what happened to some of the ideas held in the mid-­twelfth c­ entury (when Scivias was written) ­after the explosion of new knowledge that came ­later in the twelfth ­century. This would encompass the ways in which ­t hese ideas changed over time, up to the pre­sent age, especially a­ fter the so-­c alled Copernican revolution of the seventeenth ­century, the second revolution of the early twentieth ­century associated with Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, and then with the profound changes that have taken place in understandings of the cosmos in recent de­cades, a result of ever more sophisticated technology. ­There is also much that could be accomplished in a ­later set of chapters relating Hildegard’s work to vari­ ous theological strains, including that of ecotheology.9 The threads of influence traced ­here also encompass ideas about the spheres and their sounds, a topic of ­great relevance for Hildegard, who was a composer as well as a scientist and theologian. In this aspect of the work, ideas about the winds and their natures become impor­tant as well, but Hildegard’s understanding of ­music and the cosmos is quite dif­fer­ent from t­ hose of her contemporaries, as explored recently and in detail by Andrew Hicks.10 Although she certainly knew the rudiments of ­music theory, she is more poet-­composer, artist, and theologian than she is mathematician.11 The reasons for the differences too between Hildegard and the proto-­scholastics emerge h ­ ere through her cosmological understandings. They are t­ hose of a scholar who was not part of a monastic or cathedral school yet was incredibly learned and also well steeped in the liturgy as part of her life as a Benedictine nun.

Greek Cosmology as Transmitted to the Latin M ­ iddle Ages Of the ideas that ancient astronomers had, the most impor­tant for the Western Eu­ro­pean tradition are ­those of the Greeks, especially as brought to the fore by Plato (428/427 or 424/423 to 348/347 b.c.) and his pupils Eudoxos of Cnidus (ca. 408–355 b.c.) and Aristotle (384–322 b.c.). Plato’s ideas are fundamental to medieval Christian authors in the twelfth ­century, Hildegard among them, although understanding the ave­nues by which she received them is a challenge. Hildegard’s view of the geocentric universe was part of a general inheritance from the Greeks and is basic to her interpretations of the cosmos, both as scientist and theologian. In Athens, the major center of Greek thought about astronomy, scholars produced the idea of the universe as a series of concentric circles with the earth in the center,



The Cosmological Background 17

and with the earth as changing but the universe as eternal. Eudoxos of Cnidus studied in both Athens, where he heard Plato, and Alexandria, and wrote an explanation of the constellations l­ater used by Aratus. His studies include the claim that the fixed stars “­were attached to a single sphere that revolves around the earth at its center.”12 ­After the time of Eudoxos most Greeks believed in a geocentric universe.13 Aratus of Soli (ca. 310–240 b.c.) preserved in verse form a version of Eudoxos’s now lost Phaenomena; a Latin reworking of Aratus (Aratus Latinus) was known in the medieval West from the Carolingian period forward in several recensions.14 Accordingly, each of the planets, the “wanderers,” moved relative to this sphere by a system of three or four earth-­centered rotational spheres: “This was an ingenious theory that afforded for the first time a mathematical (geometrical) repre­ sen­ta­tion of the cosmos.”15 Martianus Capella, a con­temporary of Macrobius and Boethius, tried to have it both ways with the position of the Earth and its relationship to the Sun. He claims that “the Earth is not the center of the Sun’s orbit, but is eccentric to it,” but also “that the Earth stands stationary and the ­middle and bottom of the universe is demonstrated by several arguments.”16 ­These inconsistencies survived into the M ­ iddle Ages, but they w ­ ere never of major importance ­until ­later and in dif­fer­ent guises when the geocentric view of the cosmos would fi­nally fall permanently over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.17 The system advanced by Eudoxos and as brought to the West is fundamental to the kinds of cosmological diagrams that Hildegard apparently knew and drew upon to design her own diagram in Scivias I.iii (see Figure 4.4).18 Danielle Joyner describes the ways in which Herrad of Hohenberg’s own planetary diagram is situated in twelfth-­century cosmography; she makes an in­ter­est­ing parallel: Herrad wrote a­ fter Scivias was produced but out of a female monastic (Augustinian) context.19 The idea that the universe was s­ pherical and the earth was at its center, with the planets circling in concentric circles, can be seen in models of the universe that survive in sculpture from the early centuries of the Common Era, some placed on the shoulder of the god Atlas.20 Many models ­were ­simple orbs marked with traces of the stars and planets and signs of the zodiac, as was the now-­lost stone from Larissa; ­others ­were surely more complex, such as the Mainz globe, which dates from the second ­century a.d. and may have been made in Roman Egypt.21 What was below the Moon in Aristotle’s cosmos was believed to be made up of four ele­ments: earth, w ­ ater, air, and fire, and t­ hese ele­ments w ­ ere subject to change. ­These two ideas are fundamental to Hildegard’s thinking and also depicted in paintings created in her lifetime for Scivias.22 But the heavenly bodies ­were made of another ele­ment called ether, and this was ­simple, pure, and unchanging.23 This model was still functioning in the late fifteenth ­century, as can be

18 Chapter 1

seen in a figure in the Nuremberg Chronicle (Liber chronicarum) (1493) by Hartmann Schedel with a Christian spin.24 It has been much studied and frequently described in histories of astronomy: “This book, a history of the world from the creation to the date of its publication, describes how the universe was created sphere by sphere. At the center of every­t hing was the Earth, made of the spheres of the four ele­ments: earth, ­water, air, and fire. ­These spheres ­were surrounded by the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The final spheres contained the fixed stars and the Prime Mover . . . ​beyond resided the heavenly host, the multitude of saints and angels.”25 Plato’s student Aristotle was known in the Latin West ­until the mid-­twelfth ­century through only two of his works, the Categories and his On Interpretation, both as translated by Boethius.26 Aristotle’s view of time and eternity was fundamental to Greek thought, received in the West through many channels. He argued that “the pro­cesses of the universe depend on an eternal motion (or on several eternal motions), the eternal revolution of the heavenly spheres, which in turn is dependent on one or several unmoved movers” (Physics 8.6, 258b26–259a9).27 Eternal motion is not a concept accepted by Hildegard, who believed that the cosmos was set in motion at a par­tic­u­lar point and that its motion, as ­humans have understood it, would cease at the end of time. Edgar Laird divides the study of the spheres into three categories of endeavor inherited from antiquity: (1) physical cosmologists, who are basically Aristotelians, see all the spheres as having the earth as their center, and wish to build a coherent system; (2) mathematical astronomers, who are Ptolemaic, “posit eccentricities and epicycles,” and wish to make accurate predictions; and (3) the theologians descended from Plato, whose forms required philosophical investigation, the figuring of what prime mover may lie ­behind the observable and mea­sur­able phenomena, and deeper understanding of what the cosmos means for the ­humans d ­ oing the calculations.28 Of course the three are not narrowly distinct and the bound­aries between them have always been permeable. In the ­Middle Ages ­these themes and strategies would be combined in a variety of ways, and Hildegard falls into the third category but with a decidedly liturgical spin, as ­will be discussed at length in this book. Her work with the virtues, ideas that dwell in the mind of God and come forth to sustain and transform h ­ umans, is fundamental to her treatise Scivias and to her cosmology. Time and motion are not eternal for Hildegard, but the virtues and their source certainly are. The model of the universe as a set of concentrically nesting planetary orbits was complemented by the idea that t­here was a sense of life and craftsmanship ­behind its ordering and creation. The Stoic Chrysippus (ca. 280–ca. 205 b.c.) developed ideas of Plato and Aristotle and other e­ arlier Greek writers, especially in



The Cosmological Background 19

regard to the breathing universe, kept in balance by a “tension in all ­things which help the universe in its ­spherical shape.”29 According to Chrysippus an all-­pervasive pneuma created a cosmic bond that made the universe cohere.30 Manilius (fl. 1st ­century a.d.) was a stoic poet who was the probable author of a five-­volume astrological treatise, and his writing strengthened parallels between the breathing, living universe with its component parts existing in sympathy with each other.31 The poet Lucan (39–65 a.d.), whom Hildegard may have known, continued in this vein, as can be seen in his Pharsalia, in which he emphasized the totality of all the cosmos during the end times:32 “once the world’s framework loosens and its final hour, drawing all time to a close, seeks out ancient chaos once more, fiery stars ­will hurtle seaward and Earth, refusing to flatten her shores, ­will shake off the waves . . . ​ Phoebe w ­ ill sneer at steering her team along her slanted track . . . ​t he w ­ hole dis33 cordant cosmic machine w ­ ill fly apart, its laws confounded.” Hildegard’s cosmology incorporated the role of the winds as balanced, sustaining forces in the pre­sent; she also looked to their transformation at the end of time, ideas that developed over the de­cades of her thinking. The Latin word zodiacus comes from the Greek, zōdiakos kyklos, meaning circle of animals, a testimony to the stories and shapes related to the stellar configurations.34 Relationships between p ­ eople, a given culture, and interpretations of the heavens are vitally impor­tant markers, and they often relate to the ways life was to be led for crops to yield at their best and livestock to be managed.35 The question was not ­whether the cosmos governed the actions of nature and h ­ umans: that was a given in most prehistoric cultures, as it was to Hildegard: “That what we would call astronomy and astrology w ­ ere intertwined in ancient culture is clear. . . . ​In ancient Mesopotamia as well as in the Hellenistic West, though in dif­fer­ent ways, astronomy was part of a broad intellectual culture in which celestial divination, astrology, and even astral theology (for lack of a better term) not only coexisted but ­were interlocked.”36 Hildegard did not include the zodiac in her map of the cosmos painted for Scivias I.iii and described ­t here. But she did create an array of animals with symbolic meanings in Scivias III.xi.1–6: representing the “five ferocious epochs of temporal rule” that precede the final judgment and the end of time. The animals have allegorical colors: a fiery dog, a yellow lion, a pale ­horse, a black pig, and a gray wolf. They are found in the North of her cosmic map, although not depicted in the diagram accompanying Scivias I.iii; they rage and bite in the upper quarter of the painting prefacing Scivias III.xi. In her revisions of this understanding found in her third and final treatise, the Liber divinorum operum (LDO), Hildegard provided a kind of zodiacal design, one that must have grown out of her ­later study of dif­fer­ent kinds of cosmic diagrams and her continued thinking about the

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four windheads and their tripartite divisions. As can be seen in LDO I.ii, and in the thirteenth-­century painting accompanying it, Hildegard supplemented the animals found in Scivias with a set of seven more creatures, making twelve in total. Th ­ ese then are arrayed around the circumference of the painted diagram, somewhat in the way zodiac signs would have been in con­temporary cosmological diagrams. But they are not the signs of the zodiac; rather, Hildegard arranged them as the twelve windheads, now in the guise of animals, providing the structural foundation of the entirety through their mea­sured blasts of air.37 The Tower of Winds in Athens, an extraordinary surviving monument to Greek cosmology and timekeeping, shows the winds, the zodiac, and timekeeping in tandem. Vitruvius reported it was constructed by the astronomer Andronicus of Cyrrhus, ca. 100 b.c. The eight-­sided building is graced with carefully designed depictions of the winds, each indicating the direction from which they prevail; on top was once a weather vane in the form of Triton with an outstretched hand; nine sundials w ­ ere placed on the exterior as well. Inside the tower, Andronicus constructed a magnificent ­water clock to keep the time, creating a public statement through his horologion about weather, time, and the cosmos.38 This complexity of features w ­ ere all in play in the thought world of Hildegard, as she considered how her own life and the life of her community played out against the turnings of the breathing universe and the unknown mea­sure­ment of time under­lying a par­tic­u­ lar number of centuries before the inevitable cataclysmic end. The idea that the universe has life and breath relates to the sense that it has a creator as well.39 Through such agents as the Romans Pliny the Elder (d. 79 a.d.) and Lactantius (ca. 240–320 a.d.), Greek ideas about the cosmos came slowly and in bits and pieces to the Latin West; the Latin encyclopedists and commentators are removed from Greek sources by varying numbers of ­factors, and the Latin works they drew upon often do not survive. Following the destructive wars of the fourth and fifth centuries a.d. and a transformation of education that no longer featured Greek learning, knowledge moved into the schools of Christian monasteries. The ancient Greeks, and even the second-­century Ptolemy, w ­ ere preserved primarily in Arabic scientific treatises and had to await the translations of the twelfth ­century from Arabic to Latin to be generally available in the West. Inevitably, then, science and theology mixed in the centuries following late antiquity, as Christians preserved much of what survived of antique culture and knowledge in the West and edited and translated it according to their belief systems. Lactantius, writing at the court of Alexander the G ­ reat, worked to reconcile pagan and Christian views of the cosmos. He described the planetarium fabled to have been



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constructed by Archimedes, but used it to argue that if a h ­ uman could do this, then surely God could do much more: “Could Archimedes in Sicily make a model of the world from a bronze sphere, and fix the Sun and Moon in it so that they could carry out their dif­fer­ent movements on the pattern of their celestial rotations virtually day by day, and the sphere in rotation show not only the rising and setting of the Sun and the waxing and waning of the Moon but also the separate courses of the fixed and the wandering stars, and yet God could not construct the original, and bring about what ­human skill can only copy?” 40 Continuing in the tradition established by Pliny and Lactantius w ­ ere other Roman encyclopedists, among them the fourth-­century Calcidius, who translated a significant portion of Plato’s Timaeus but added his own interpretations in the pro­cess. Calcidius’s views are especially impor­tant ­because Peter Dronke believes Hildegard had access to a copy of his work.41 His ordering of the planets, Moon–­ Mercury–­Venus–­Sun–­Mars–­Jupiter–­Saturn, is that followed in many planetary diagrams from the ­Middle Ages, including Hildegard’s.42 Dronke deftly describes the three heroines of creation and cosmos found in Calcidius, “Anima mundi,” “Providentia,” and “Silva,” adding Natura as a distant fourth. Calcidius was a “master of e­ very shade of personification,” bringing all of the universe to life in his commentary.43 The nature of God’s work of creation is basic to Hildegard’s quest for cosmological understanding. In Platonism as inherited in the West, God is seen as a masterful artisan, an idea that Hildegard uses in Scivias II.i.44 In the summary he pre­sents of the first part of the Timaeus, Calcidius offers an overview of the workings of the universe and the nature of its maker: “In the text of the previous part of this work we have given a separate treatment of the completion of the entire world as effected by the craftsman god, adhering insofar as our modest capability permitted to Platonic doctrines as concerns the contemplation of nature and the technical modes of reasoning.” 45 As Augustine was obsessed with the idea that the cosmos could be read as evidence for the nature of the Creator God (see below), this idea became fundamental to medieval Christian authors, yet not without significant reworkings.46 In the hands of Christian theologians, then, Divinity was at work ­behind h ­ uman images and descriptions of the universe, just as the universe itself was created for Christians by the second member of the Trinity, the Word.47 The idea that the earth was created by a g­ rand craftsman, and that it breathed with divine understanding, relates to the theme of a sounding cosmos. Pliny the Elder completed an encyclopedia on the natu­ral world that would continue to provide knowledge about the planets and stars and their mea­sure­ments long ­after his death. Pliny’s influential compendium draws heavi­ly on knowledge received

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from the Greeks, including his description of the distances between the planets expressed in the terms of musical tones: But occasionally Pythagoras draws on the theory of ­music, and designates the distance between the earth and the moon as a w ­ hole tone, that between the moon and Mercury a semitone, between Mercury and Venus the same, between her and the sun a tone and a half, between the sun and Mars a tone (the same as the distance between the earth and the moon), between Mars and Jupiter half a tone, between Jupiter and Saturn half a tone, between Saturn and the zodiac a tone and a half: the seven tones thus producing the so-­called diapason (an octave) i.e. a universal harmony; in this Saturn moves in the Dorian mode, Jupiter in the Phrygian, and similarly with the other planets—­a refinement more entertaining than convincing.48 The classical Greek and Latin background for the sounding cosmos is thoroughly discussed in Andrew Hicks’s book Composing the World, which for this aspect of the study of cosmology is the best ­thing to read at pre­sent. He says: “The ­music of the spheres is sight unheard. It demands an aspirational aurality that is itself the product of an anxious desire to know and to hear.” 49 Hicks does not include Hildegard, and for good reason: she is not a passionate student of the divine numbers under­lying the sounds of the spheres. However, her engagement with the world soul of the Platonists argues for her place at the ­table, as ­will be seen further in this chapter. She is deeply interested in speech, its components, and how it is made, ­these ele­ments reflecting her Trinitarian theology. She is at ­great pains as well to compose a kind of ­music that sounds in a par­tic­u­lar way, manipulating the modes to create sound that relates to an understanding of ­music in the heavenly spheres. A passage from Plato’s Timaeus from Calcidius’s commentary resonates with Hildegard’s cosmological understanding in several ways, and Dronke has suggested that Hildegard knew Calcidius early in her c­ areer, as ideas pre­sent in Scivias would support. Calcidius says of Plato: ­ ere are, then, two principal senses, vision and hearing, both of them Th aids to philosophy: one of them the more obviously so, in that by virtue of its proper acuity it is suited to comprehend ­t hings in themselves, and the other more subtly so, in that it is suited to provide instruction even concerning absent t­ hings, since air, when modulated according to the articulation of voice and becoming voice or intelligible speech, reaches the inner senses of the listener, announcing to the intellect t­ hings pre­sent as well as absent. And that this hearing aids intellect too he shows as follows: and it



The Cosmological Background 23

is clear that as much of the vocal utility as is captured in connection with ­music has been conferred upon mankind entirely for the sake of harmony. For in ­earlier sections he constructed the soul in accordance with harmonic ratio and indicated that its natu­ral activity consists of rhythms and modes, but that the latter fade owing to soul’s association with body, as the state of oblivion inevitably takes hold, and that the souls of many are consequently deprived of modulation. The remedy for this defect, he says, is found in ­music, not the ­music in which the mob delights and which sometimes gives rise to vices, when performed for the sake of plea­sure, but in the divine ­music that is never disposed to separation from reason and intelligence. For he holds that this is the m ­ usic that fi­nally calls souls that stray from the right path back to their original state of harmony.50 The idea of a remembered m ­ usic is one of the Platonic ideas emphasized by Hildegard in her description of a fallen soul in Scivias I.iv.1. The lament found ­here also runs like a thread through the actions of the character Anima in her play Ordo virtutum. It seems that she wrote t­hese materials si­mul­ta­neously, so closely are they related. With such interplay between t­ hese two modes of expression, Hildegard provided theological under­pinnings for the dramatic reenactment of the mystery she believed was constantly unfolding at the center of the cosmos.51 Her prose description in Scivias of the soul’s attempt to recall the once-­k nown m ­ usic is as dramatic as the play itself: “But when I remember you, O ­mother Zion, in whom I should have dwelt, I see the b ­ itter slavery to which I am subjected. And when I have called to memory the m ­ usic of all sorts that dwells in you, I feel my wounds. And when I remember the joy and gladness of your glory, I am horrified by the poisons that pollute them. Oh, where s­ hall I turn? And where s­ hall I flee?”52 The Roman Macrobius in the early fifth c­ entury commented on a portion of Cicero’s Res Publica, the Dream of Scipio, adding extensive passages concerning astronomy as he understood it in a Neoplatonic strain of thought.53 He related the heavens to h ­ uman souls, who descend from on high to take on bodies, and then, depending on their actions, may return (or not) to the heaven: “Souls descend from the sky at the place where the Milky Way intersects the zodiac. In each of the planetary spheres they acquire an attribute which they are to exercise on earth.”54 The section of Macrobius’s Commentary dealing with astronomy occupies about half the treatise (I.xiv.21–­II.ix) and often circulated in­de­pen­dently in the ­Middle Ages. His work contains several sections on the m ­ usic of the spheres, relating to both pitch and sound. He says that h ­ uman theoretical understanding mea­sures what “the h ­ uman breath can produce or the h ­ uman ear can catch.”55 But the range

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of celestial m ­ usic is far greater; it is also louder than h ­ uman ears could tolerate. He connects the world soul, the creative force, to the numbers of ­music: “the World-­ Soul, which stirred the body of the universe to the motion that we now witness, must have been interwoven with t­ hose numbers which produce musical harmony.”56 Ideas that Hildegard may have had about specific pitches found in the modes or scales that she knew and composed in have resonance with m ­ usic theory as inherited from the Greeks and as understood in her own time. This legacy continued to be transmitted in a variety of ways in the late antique and Carolingian periods, with the liturgy and time reckoning playing an ever-­important role in cosmological understanding. She said in ­Causes and Cures: “In its revolving the firmament emits marvellous sounds, which we nevertheless cannot hear b ­ ecause of its g­ reat height and expanse; likewise a millwheel or cartwheel gives out sound when it turns.”57

Christian Contributions: Late Antiquity and the Carolingians ­ ere are two writers whose works stand as pillars in the late antique period, inTh forming all scholars who came ­after them: Boethius and Augustine. Although he seems to mention such a work, no treatise on astronomy by Boethius survives, and what is known about his ideas on the subject comes from his other writings, most notably from his Consolation of Philosophy, a treatise composed through use of alternating sections of prose and poetry.58 Peter Dronke calls Book III, metrum 9, “O qui perpetua mundum,” “the most penetrating ancient interpretation of the Timaeus.”59 ­There is no evidence of direct quotation from Boethius in Hildegard’s Scivias, and yet it is likely that such a scholar and thinker as she was knew the Consolation. The beautiful opening of metrum 9 resonates with much of her thinking and her essentially Platonic understanding of the cosmos: O you who govern the world with perpetual reason, sower of lands and sky, you who command time to go forth from eternity and, remaining stable, make all t­ hings to be moved, you whom no external c­ auses drove to fashion the product of m ­ atter in flux—­rather, the implanted form of the supreme good, devoid of envy: you draw all ­t hings from the exemplar on high . . . ​60 Crucial to Hildegard is the idea of the forms in God’s mind, with virtues serving as ideas that can be known through vari­ous kinds of learning inspired by Christ.61 In



The Cosmological Background 25

Scivias I.iv.4, the soul says: “reason, which along with knowledge lives in me, shows me that I was created by God,” a profoundly Boethian understanding. The idea of remembered ­music and sound, as discussed above, is also an understanding found in Boethius’s treatise on ­music, a work forming the basic textbook for the study of ­music as one of the liberal arts, and part of the quadrivium (which included astronomy as well). Hildegard may well have known this work (or excerpts from it), but it, like other works she may have read, is not cited directly in Scivias. Unlike the absence of passages and vocabulary from Boethius in Scivias, quotations from and resonances with Augustine form a long column in the apparatus to the critical edition of Scivias. This is not surprising as the writings of Augustine ­were fundamental in regard to interpretations of the heavens in theological circles in the Latin M ­ iddle Ages, and his views on creation, time, and memory continue to engage both con­temporary phi­los­o­phers and astronomers. Augustine was well educated and taught grammar and rhe­toric in Milan before he became bishop of a see in North Africa; as a result, his writings show an understanding of the cosmos as a “­spherical conception of heaven and of earth.” 62 As he spent years of his early life as a Manichean, a widespread set of religious beliefs named for the Persian Mani, Augustine often wrote against simplistic dualism in the cosmos, attacking ideas concerning the powers of the zodiac to control the events of ­human life as well.63 As a result he was instrumental in separating out natu­ral science from speculations about meaning. Whereas Augustine, like all the ancients, blurred the line between what would be called ­today astrology and astronomy, he was clear about the omnipotence of the Christian God, and so would not give the stars powers of control. Augustine’s writings show his g­ reat interest in the hexameron and in the created universe as evidence for understanding the Creator. He turned to the book of Genesis to ground his thoughts, writing five commentaries on parts of this book: of special interest ­here are his discussions of Genesis 1 and 2, which contain descriptions of the stages of creation.64 Beyond the five works or portions of works devoted to the topic are several of his other writings in which he engages with the issues of creation, how and why the earth and its inhabitants came to be, and the probable nature of their ­future. By studying the act of creation, Augustine believed he was exploring the nature of God and the relationship of God to the special creation made in the divine image, ­human beings, central topics for a theologian. His reliance on Genesis as a fundamental text brought the cosmological legends of ancient Hebrew thought to the forefront for centuries in the writings of Christian thinkers, fusing them with a Neoplatonic series of ideas that Augustine apparently inherited primarily from Plotinus and Porphyry but then rethought to a significant degree. He believed that the world had been created along with time itself, and

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that when the world ended, so too would time. God created the universe through the agent of his Word, Christ, the second person of the Trinity, offering personhood to Plato’s divine artisan: By your creation the craftsman has a body, a mind by which he commands its members, material out of which he makes something, a skill by which he masters his art and sees inwardly what he is making outwardly. From your creation come the bodily senses which he uses to translate his ­mental concept into the material objects he is making, and to report back to the mind what has been made, so that the mind within may deliberate with the truth presiding over it to consider w ­ hether the work has been well done. All t­ hese praise you, the creator of every­t hing. But how do you make them? The way, God, in which you made heaven and earth was not that you made them ­either in heaven or on earth . . . ​Nor did you make the universe within the framework of the universe. Th ­ ere was nowhere for it to be made before it was brought into existence . . . ​you spoke and they w ­ ere 65 made, and by your word you made them. The writings of Augustine ­were found in ­every monastic and cathedral library throughout medieval Eu­rope. Alongside his writings would have been found the encyclopedia of Isidore of Seville (d. 636), the Etymologies, a vast compendium of knowledge.66 In his section on the liberal arts (Book III), Isidore put forth a discussion of astronomy, ideas that would inform understanding of the cosmos for centuries. He claimed he was following the phi­los­o­phers in saying that the “caelum” (sky) is “rounded, spinning, and burning” (III.xxxi, p. 100). Earth is at the center of this round sphere, and the sun is much larger than it, whereas the Moon is smaller. Isidore covers a ­great number of topics, including the fixity of the stars, the motions of the planets, the names of the hemi­spheres, the constellations and their names, time as meted out by lunar cycles, the speed of the sky, and the polar axis of the earth: “the northern axis is a straight line that stretches through the center of the ball of the sphere. It is called an axis b ­ ecause the sphere turns upon it as if it w ­ ere a wheel” (III.xxxvi, p. 100). Isidore’s Etymologies also contains an introduction to the calculation of the date of Easter (Book 6, chapter 17), and his words on the subject ­were much quoted in the ­later computus tradition. He closed with condemnation of mathesis (astrology) and made a strong distinction between study of the cosmos and using the motions of the stars to predict the ­f uture.67 His On the Nature of ­Things is a treatise on cosmology and fleshes out many of the points offered in the Etymologies. Although very much in sync with Augustine, Isidore re-



The Cosmological Background 27

lied heavi­ly upon pagan authorities from antiquity and so brought them, in so much as he knew them, into the conversation in a permanent way.68 According to Augustine, time was created for h ­ umans. To calculate dates for the cele­bration of feasts and propagation of crops was considered a part of God-­ given work, as the countless calendars with the l­abors of the months prominently displayed in liturgical books, in prayer books, and on church buildings demonstrate. Many Christian authors in the early M ­ iddle Ages w ­ ere quick to condemn divination, but on the other hand they believed God created the universe and could, if God wished, speak through its ele­ments to ­humans, who ­were part of that creation.69 Prayer for medieval Christians was powerfully rooted in the times and seasons. Gregory of Tours (538–94) compiled his treatise On the Course of the Stars to help with the calculation of hours for the cursus or fixed times for daily prayer, eight in number, with the longest period falling in the ­middle of the night. In monastic and cathedral schools the liturgy of the hours of prayer included Lauds, a ser­v ice at dawn, where God was praised through the singing of Psalms 148–50, the text that is featured at the very end of Scivias. ­There was no escaping the allusions to the ordering and creation of the natu­ral world, as can be seen in the opening of Psalm 148: “Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise ye him in the high places. Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, O sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars and light. Praise him, ye heavens of heavens: and let all the ­waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord. For he spoke, and they w ­ ere made: he commanded, and they w ­ ere created.” The morning hymn by Ambrose of Milan (d. 397) “Aeterne rerum conditor” was sung throughout all Latin Christendom, putting singers in tune with the new day, praising God for hours and seasons that change to relieve tedium.70 Ideas about cosmos and creation and the nature of time from ancient Israel played a major role in the development of both cosmology and cosmogeny in Western thought.71 Hildegard was steeped in biblical knowledge, and her views of the cosmos are always a blend of an inherited body of scientific understanding and biblical themes, especially as known through the liturgy. As can be told from numerous biblical passages, it was central to the tradition that the cosmos was divided into three realms: the Earth, which belonged to h ­ umans; heaven, the dwelling place of God; and the netherworld, Sheol. Psalm 113: 24–25: “The heaven of heaven is the Lord’s: but the earth he has given to the children of men. The dead shall not praise thee, O Lord: nor any of them that go down to hell.”72 The description of creation in Genesis 1 is the fullest and most polished account in the Bible of how God made the universe. Scholars argue that ­there was an ­earlier set of creation myths, ­earlier than 722 b.c., and that the story in Genesis is a version that r­ ose out of the experience of

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the Babylonian exile of the sixth ­century b.c. The priestly author of Genesis 1 was relating the text to the liturgy and to the t­ emple, and so from the beginning t­ here is a connection made in this ancient text between creation, cosmos, worship, and time:73 “Crucial to the Biblical narrative is the manner that light is created in Genesis 1: The darkness is already pre­sent, only ‘light’ is created. The darkness resulting from the contrast summed up in v. 2 is not created but ­limited. In the separation from light and in the name-­giving, Elohim demonstrates his power over darkness. Darkness is no longer boundless but is given its place in the rhythm of time.”74 Fundamental to medieval understandings, including t­ hose of Hildegard, are the many interpretations of “day one,” God’s first act of creation, and the separation of light from darkness, day from light. All h ­ umans, no m ­ atter their geo­graph­ i­cal location, ­were deeply engaged too with the ways that the relationship of light to darkness changed day by day. All ancient cultures worked with some kind of system for mea­sur­ing the yearlong rotation of the earth around the sun. As the earth zooms in its orbit at 67,000 miles per hour, the sun is observed against dif­ fer­ent stellar patterns month by month, and the constellations in the path acquired names and associations with seasons, par­tic­u­lar gods, and the names of animals, and ­t hese designations are telling for cultural studies. The cycle closest to that a­ dopted by the Greeks and then the Romans seemingly began in Mesopotamia, well before 2000 b.c.75 Medieval Christians w ­ ere fascinated by the idea of synchronicity, that is, the meaningful lining up of events that took place in history with times of the liturgical day, hour, and year. The most significant of ­t hese was the cele­bration of Easter, which was believed from the texts of the Bible to have occurred in relationship to the Jewish feast of Passover, which begins on the fifteenth day of the month of Nisan. From the second ­century forward it had been de­cided to situate the cele­ bration of Easter on or a­ fter the first full moon a­ fter the vernal equinox. Liturgical practices w ­ ere, from the beginning of the Judeo-­Christian thought world, related to cosmological understanding. In fact, the history of astronomy in the West and the history of astronomical calculations are deeply rooted in liturgical practices. In order for the liturgy to unfold without serious difficulty, medieval cantors and other officials had to be able to calculate the vernal equinox each year. The Christian calendar, then, relied on two kinds of reckoning: the Roman Julian calendar, which was based on the Sun, and lunar cycles of Jewish practice as transformed in Alexandria to a nineteen-­year cycle and subsequently transmitted to the West in the Easter t­able of the Roman Dionysius Exiguus in 525. Dionysius, who knew both Greek and Latin, created an Easter ­table that continued to be expanded upon and refined in the sixth and seventh centuries, placing the equinox on March 21,



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with Easter falling between March 22 and April 25.76 A competing way of ancient reckoning is the latercus, which was based on an eighty-­four-­year Easter cycle designed by the chronicler Sulpicius Severus in the early fifth ­century, which used March 25 as the equinox.77 The science of calendar reckoning is called computistics, and a book that rec­ ords it, of which ­t here are thousands of representatives from the ­Middle Ages, is called a computus. The subject can be broadly defined, and included astronomical theory and the history and workings of both the solar and lunar calendars: “In the early sixth c­ entury, when Dionysius Exiguus made the Alexandrian Easter t­able available to the West, this science was rather narrowly defined as the means necessary for an understanding of this new t­ able and the system under­lying it. From the ­middle of the seventh c­ entury onwards, however, computistics developed into a synthesis of every­thing even remotely relevant to time reckoning in its most general form. Therefore computistics covered e­ very aspect of theoretical as well as applied science.”78 When it comes to time reckoning, the Venerable Bede (d. 735) has long been seen as a watershed in the centuries between late antiquity and the Carolingian re­nais­sance of the late eighth and ninth centuries. His work must be contextualized by study of Irish and insular treatises, most especially the Munich Computus, an Irish work from around 700, introduced and translated by Immo Warntjes. Both this and Bede’s De temporibus (On the Times) (written in 703) are early representatives of what would become an impor­tant genre, the computistical textbook.79 Bede’s On the Times can be paired with his early On the Nature of Th ­ ings (which drew upon Isidore’s work by this name). Their translators Calvin B. Kendall and Faith Wallis have perceived a relationship between them: in On the Nature of ­Things, Bede showed how the lofty spheres of the universe can be seen in relationship to the microcosmic geo­graph­i­cal units comprising the earth; and in the second treatise, the seconds, minutes, and hours of time build up to the ages of history. Bede worked with a horologion drawn on the ground, and although it could not have been used for mea­sure­ments with the precision he claimed for it, still it made ­later scholars involved in computistics especially interested in refining their calculations and their ways of making them. Bruce Eastwood’s scholarship emphasizes the new levels of rationalization found among scholars in Carolingian times and their turn to diagrams to aid in this quest. He says that the diagrams accompanying astrological treatises and commentaries simplify and focus the information to be conveyed, giving “a sense of order and regularity in general.” 80 As the head of a monastic community, Hildegard would have been steeped in this tradition, and she would have understood her mathe­matics and her

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astronomy against this backdrop. She not only had to get the feasts and seasons ordered appropriately, she also had to explain why d ­ oing so mattered. Clearly Scivias is her way of instructing a monastic community on cosmology as she knew it and could make it meaningful for a group far less learned than was she. She worked to root their practices deeply within a rudimentary understanding of astronomy. Much of astronomy and mathe­matics in the Carolingian period, the background of which is crucial for understanding the science Hildegard inherited, related to the liturgy and the calculation of Easter and developed from the science of computistics.81 Charlemagne himself was obsessed with astronomy, arranging to have the subject treated throughout the years of his reign. Development expanded in this period through the arts, as the many thousands of treatises concerning computistics, as well as copies of traditional authors such as Pliny, Isidore, and Bede, ­were often graced with drawings and paintings. Many of t­hese treatises have now been digitized by the libraries that own them and have become readily available for study. One of the most beautiful of ­these plans is that found in a Latin translation by Germanicus (15 b.c.–19 a.d.) of the Phaenomena, the poem by the Greek author Aratus of Soli (ca. 310–240 b.c.), mentioned above, which follows a now lost treatise by Eudoxos of Cnidus.82 This deluxe copy of the work, prepared for Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious (788–840) in Aachen, has been examined by some of the leading students of Carolingian astronomy, especially for its cosmological map on fol. 97v.83 The map attempts to demonstrate the orbits of the planets around the earth but also includes orbits by Venus and Mercury around the sun, in addition to numerous plans of the constellations on other folios. The contents of the map have recently been redated: it shows the cosmos as observed on April 16, 816.84 Perhaps a contributor to the thought ­behind this beautiful Carolingian map of the cosmos was the figure known only as the Astronomer, a high-­placed member of Louis the Pious’s court. He wrote a history of the emperor’s life that includes many apparent eyewitness observations, including seeing a mysterious portent in the sky in the spring of 837: “for twenty-­five days—it is marvelous to tell it—it crossed through the signs of that same star, Virgo and then Leo and Cancer and then Gemini, ­until it fi­nally dropped its fiery mass and abundant brilliance, which is used to spread everywhere, at the head of Taurus and u ­ nder the feet of the Char­ i­ot­eer. The emperor, who was first of all very keen about such t­ hings, when he saw that the comet had s­ topped was anxious, before he went to bed, to interrogate a certain person who had been summoned, namely me, who is writing this, and he is believed to have knowledge of t­ hese m ­ atters.” 85



The Cosmological Background 31

It has long been supposed by scholars that the description is of Halley’s Comet, which was known to have been vis­i­ble in that year. When it comes to planetary observations in the Carolingian period, scholars are able to compare results from Western observers with t­ hose of Chinese astronomers, as Scott Ashley has done for the report of the Astronomer.86 It seems more likely that what drove the emperor to penance and brought the Astronomer to a fearful silence was a supernova, this accounting for its seeming to stop in the sky, something a comet would not do: “On a clear late Spring eve­ning in 837, above the imperial palaces of Chang’an in China and Aachen Eu­rope, in the western and north-­western skies, the horns of Taurus reared above the horizon, linked to the feet of Auriga, with Gemini above and to the west. W ­ hether on 29 April or 6 May, Dongjing/Gemini was so positioned in the sky that any object literally seen below it, that is between the constellation and the horizon from the perspective of an Earthbound observer, would indeed have appeared near the head of Taurus and the feet of Auriga, where the Astronomer claimed the ‘comet’ ­stopped.” 87 Medieval histories and chronicles as well as lives of famous figures and saints are filled with astronomical reports, the one mentioned above being a single example out of thousands, and it is pos­si­ble to compare them globally as in the case above, which draws upon the centuries of extant Chinese astrological reports. Perhaps the most famous of all comets was depicted in art: Halley’s Comet, which appeared in 1066, the year that the Norman Duke William conquered the Anglo-­ Saxon King Harold in the ­Battle of Hastings. The late eleventh-­century Bayeux Tapestry (actually an embroidery) shows it as a portent of ­things to come, with figures looking up in amazement and trying to interpret its meanings. The historian William of Malmesbury, writing in the first half of the twelfth c­ entury, reported that an ancient monk from his monastery was said to have hailed the comet, as he lived to see it twice, once in 1066 and once e­ arlier: “­You’ve come, have you? Y ­ ou’ve come, you source of tears to many m ­ others. It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country.” 88 The Periphyseon (The Division of Nature) by the Neoplatonist John Scottus Eriugena (ca. 810–ca. 877), an Irish scholar writing in Frankish lands, combines studies of the Timaeus, Augustine’s On Genesis, and vari­ous Neoplatonic sources he knew in Greek and in Latin. Eriugena thought of creation as a pro­cess divisible into four stages; he related each day in creation to the prime mover as found in stages of the pro­cess. He divided the planets by harmonic intervals and “believed the physical order of the vis­i­ble cosmos to be thoroughly rational and describable

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by numbers.” 89 To such a thinker, the art of proportion found in m ­ usic related this liberal art fundamentally to t­ hose of mathe­matics and astronomy. But direct reference to him ­will not be found in Scivias, and in fact, the only time the editors see fit to cite him as a pos­si­ble influence is in Hildegard’s discussion of the angelic hierarchy, in Scivias I.vi.90 But his work was foundational for the hexameral and cosmological thinking of Honorius Augustodunensis, and surely Hildegard knew at least some of Honorius’s much-­copied writings.91 The apophatic Eriugenic cosmos is quite dif­fer­ent in kind from that of Hildegard, ever rooted as it is in her sense of a power­f ul duality between good and evil, a duality that is observable and can be known. For Eriugena creation itself is rather a source of unfathomable mystery, ever calling to the ­human intellect for contemplation, and yet always impossible to comprehend: For every­t hing that is understood and sensed is nothing ­else but the apparition of what is not apparent, the manifestation of the hidden, the affirmation of the negated, the comprehension of the incomprehensible, the understanding of the unintelligible, the body of the bodiless, the essence of the superessential, the form of the formless, the mea­sure of the measureless, the number of the unnumbered, the weight of the weightless, the materialization of the spiritual, the visibility of the invisible, the place of that which is in no place, the time of the timeless, the definition of the infinite, the circumscription of the uncircumscribed, and the other ­things which are both considered and perceived by the intellect alone and cannot be retained within the recesses of the memory and which escape the sharpness of mind.92 Hildegard, as a composer of m ­ usic and the head of a monastic community, would have possessed knowledge of time and time reckoning.93 Her own views of time ­were rooted in her understanding of the ways in which the liturgy is an allegorical reflection of cosmic action. The texts of her homilies, all of which are for par­tic­u­ lar feasts and which ­were preached on texts featured in the liturgy on designated days, provide views of how Hildegard thought about the unfolding calendar and its cosmic implications. Th ­ ese implications extend to h ­ uman deeds, for in her view ­t hese too are reflected in cosmic action. She says in her homily for the first Sunday of Advent: “Therefore, when h ­ uman beings perform evil deeds the air and the ­water are struck and the ­water extends ­t hose evil deeds to the sun, the moon, and the stars, since t­ hese reflect from the w ­ ater. And so t­ hose heavenly bodies shake ­humans violently with unaccustomed terrors, in accordance with their deeds, ‘from



The Cosmological Background 33

perplexity’ b ­ ecause the w ­ aters have been poured out by the Holy Spirit, ‘and the sound of the sea and of the waves’ b ­ ecause t­ hese emit a sound, wailing on account of the perverse deeds of humankind.” 94

Hildegard and Her Contemporaries As computistics was foundational in the Latin ­Middle Ages for predicting Easter and other feasts as well as comets and eclipses, it should be no won­der that advances related to mathe­matics and astronomy frequently took place within the development of computistics throughout Eu­rope in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.95 Ways of mea­sur­ing ­were becoming more complicated as a result of the spread of the planispheric astrolabe, an ancient instrument designed to show how the sky looks at any par­tic­u­lar time in any place. Astrolabes are analog calculators first developed by the Greeks, prob­ably in Alexandria in the second ­century b.c.; they came to be especially favored in Muslim culture ­because of the importance of calculating hours of prayer and the direction of Mecca. It has been suggested that the scholar and teacher Gerbert of Aurillac (946–1003), the eventual Pope Sylvester II, used the astrolabe as he taught astronomy in the cathedral school of Reims.96 Examples of further developments in the course of the eleventh ­century can be seen in the writings of Hermannus of Reichnau (aka Hermannus Contractus), a scholar, composer, and chronicler, who was once thought to have penned a treatise on the astrolabe, and who did use his understandings of computus in his compositions, and the religious reformer William of Hirsau, whose treatise on ­music theory does survive but whose work on astronomy does not (except for a tantalizing fragment).97 ­These figures and their studies, and t­ hose of o ­ thers from the same period, complemented cosmological thought in the first half of the twelfth c­ entury, as new scientific and astronomical knowledge began to slowly make its way into Eu­ rope from the Near East, especially via Italy and Spain. The angels on the twelfth-­ century northern door of the west facade of Chartres Cathedral hold astrolabes as they seem to announce the timing of Advent and a probable Second Coming.98 A mid-­twelfth-­century En­glish copy of an eleventh-­century treatise on astronomy and the natu­ral won­ders of the world shows a seated man using an astrolabe.99 The Western means of calculating Easter using the Dionysian astronomical ­tables grew increasingly inaccurate as the centuries wore on: “the mean synodic month implicit in the 19-­year cycle was nearly 23 seconds too long, causing the calculated lunar ages to move away from the ­actual lunar phases at the rate of one day in a l­ittle over three centuries.”100 ­There are many examples from the late eleventh

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c­ entury through the twelfth of the ways in which Arabic means of calculation slowly came to offer strategies for correction, depending on the use of Arabic numerals and ever more sophisticated mathematical strategies. The En­glishman Adelard of Bath (ca. 1080–ca. 1152) provides an example of the kinds of work a few scientists with knowledge of astronomy ­were accomplishing in the first half of the twelfth c­ entury. Adelard was a layman, a member of the court of King Henry I of ­England, whose primary interests ­were in philosophy and the quadrivium: mathe­matics, astronomy, geometry, and m ­ usic. One of his most impor­tant works was his treatise On the Same and the Dif­fer­ent (De eodem et diverso), in which he tried, as did Boethius before him, to reconcile Plato’s and Aristotle’s diametrically opposed viewpoints. He traveled widely to the Near East and Italy in his quest for knowledge, especially for the writings of Greek and Arabic phi­los­o­phers and scientists. He prob­ably brought back books to ­England and translated o ­ thers, including Euclid’s Ele­ments, his work laying the foundation for mathe­matics for centuries ­after him. The breadth of his knowledge can be seen in his De avibus tractatus, a treatise on birds, which draws upon both Arabic and Latin source materials. His greatest contribution to astronomy lay in his translation of the astronomical t­ables of the ninth-­century Muslim scientist Al-Khwārizmī, which he knew in the recension of eleventh-­century Spanish/Arabic scholars; this material also appeared in another guise in the so-­called Toledo t­ ables, translated by Gerard of Cremona in the late twelfth ­century.101 An overview of science and astronomy just at the time that Hildegard wrote Scivias is also found in Winthrop Wetherbee’s introduction to the con­temporary Cosmographia by Bernardus Silvestris, one that emphasizes the importance of Eriugena’s De divisione naturae: “It is almost certainly Eriugena who provides the theological and philosophical basis for the dynamic view of material potentiality which is so impor­tant a feature of Bernardus’s allegory . . . ​Bernardus points up the limitations of the strictly cosmological conception of man, and the final inadequacy of the natural world as a source of vision and stability.”102 And yet Bernardus’s belief in the ultimate ability of h ­ umans to be reformed resonates strongly with Hildegard and the theological overlay in her interpretations: “The h ­ uman race, although, being mortal, it is inhibited by its condition, must yet be so reformed that it may rise to dwell among the heavenly powers, and to subject to its laws what­ever the star-­bearing sphere impels by its circling, and by all ­t hese means redeem the taint of its earthly beginnings and its innate evil.”103 At the same time that computistics and scientific and mathematical understandings ­were becoming more sophisticated in the twelfth ­century, another trend was also in operation. During the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, many writ-



The Cosmological Background 35

ers in the Latin West interpreted drawings and plans of the cosmos in Christian terms, adding a power­f ul theological overlay that had not been found to the same degree in the patristic and Carolingian periods. Images with Christ embracing the w ­ hole appear in a variety of guises. Barbara Obrist has spoken about this changing development in terms of the depiction and interpretation of wind charts, maps that incorporate some repre­sen­ta­tion of the four winds and their directions: “What changed was that, in a context of growing interest in theorizing about the relation of nature to the Godhead, the outer circle was sometimes circumscribed by the all-­embracing Divine Spirit. In the first part of the twelfth ­century other cosmological images w ­ ere also framed in this way. But the distinctive feature of wind diagrams is that in a combined use of biblical, patristic, and Stoic physical traditions winds ­were directly related to God. . . . ​In general they serve as intermediaries between the terrestrial and the celestial.”104 ­There are figures from the first half of the twelfth c­ entury who as individuals and parts of communities of thought and action produced cosmology, theology, artworks, and ­music, offering contextualization for Hildegard’s own efforts. Most notable among them are Honorius Augustodunensis, Rupert of Deutz, Abelard, Hugh of St-­Victor, Bernardus Silvestris, Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, and Hermann of Carinthia, whose De Essentiis provides a contrast with the monastic schools of the other figures (although his teacher was Thierry of Chartres).105 The Liber floridus, an astronomical compendium with copious illustrations, was completed by the monk Lambert in 1121 and is witness to the kinds of sources Hildegard could have known and the traditions of providing pictures to illustrate classic concepts.106 Chasing down Hildegard’s sources is a very difficult game, and some of the most learned scholars in recent de­cades have played and lost—­and by their own admission. Peter Dronke has been a skilled and energetic detective, his notes to Hildegard’s Liber divinorum operum providing an excellent introduction to the vastness of her knowledge. He worked by carefully tracing out all her difficult turns of phrase and vocabulary to see what she might have had access to in her work. And when he could find resonances, and was confident enough to acknowledge them, he can tell that seldom does Hildegard take a loan without offering significant interest. Dronke says: “even if one can, so to speak, catch her out in seeing where she must have come across a rare expression or motif, she hardly ever follows the passage in question word for word more than a brief moment—­ constantly she reshapes and varies what she has read, never stressing the links and often effacing them.”107 Of the list of twelfth-­century theologians writing at the time Hildegard composed Scivias, two are the most likely to have influenced her. Hugh of St-­Victor’s

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writings w ­ ere surely known to Hildegard in one form or another. Hugh’s opus magnum, De sacramentis christianae fidei (On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith), was completed in the mid-1130s not long before Hildegard began Scivias in 1141 (for further discussion, see Chapter 2). Another writer of probable influence was Honorius Augustodunensis, who wrote in Regensburg (see especially Chapter 5). His Imago mundi was widespread in Hildegard’s region, and he was revising it throughout the years leading up to the beginning of Scivias: he finished it in 1111, but recensions w ­ ere prepared in 1123, 1133, and 1139.108 Both Honorius and Hugh or­ga­nized the treatises mentioned h ­ ere in ways that are reflected in Hildegard’s Scivias. Like Hugh’s De sacramentis and Honorius’s Imago mundi, Scivias contains discussion of the natu­ral world, of its fallen state, and then of the actions of redemption. Scivias, like De sacramentis, is a summa, a work that treats the entire known history of the cosmos, from its initial creation to its end. But although Hildegard’s work, on the surface at least, is firmly rooted in the traditions of t­ hese two, and perhaps to other impor­tant theologians whose writings on cosmology she prob­ably had access to, it is difficult to know in what form she had ­t hese writings or even the degree to which she was considering them as she worked. In some ways, however, as w ­ ill be argued, Scivias seems to offer a deliberate counterpoint to some of Hugh’s ideas. It is of g­ reat interest, then, that the first half of the twelfth ­century saw the intensification of two trends in the study of astronomy. On the one hand, scientific understanding was beginning to expand as a result of new texts and translations, especially of materials from antiquity via Arabic translations of Greek texts rendered into Latin, and Islamic astronomy as well.109 Renewed study of logic and of the Greeks reawakened the study of nature.110 At the same time, theologians ­were looking at the cosmos and its formation with ever renewed interest, thinking about how it was that the Christian God encompassed it, and how it was a manifestation of religious truths as well as biblical texts. It is in this period of time that Hildegard of Bingen wrote the first of her three theological treatises, Scivias, which as I have mentioned includes paintings, chant texts, and a truncated text of her play, the Ordo virtutum. In addition to her theological works, her ­music, and drama, Hildegard is also credited with the two scientific treatises mentioned in the Introduction, one of which begins with a short cosmology, as well as exegetical studies and nearly four hundred letters.111 Hers is the only corpus of works from the pen of a single author written in this fruitful period that includes all t­ hese strains of development, and it allows for the study of science, theology, ­music, drama, and the visual arts all at once. With such a rich and complex array of materials, I have chosen one group of ideas from within her first treatise, the cosmological, including her thoughts not



The Cosmological Background 37

only about the functioning of the universe but also about its beginnings and what for her was its inevitable end. Her multidisciplinary uniqueness does not cut her off from her contemporaries; quite the opposite. Indeed, none of the figures whom Hildegard prob­ably knew and read as individuals produced the many kinds of work that Hildegard did herself. Rather, each functioned within a sphere of influence or as a member of a school that did have impor­tant representative works in the art of letter writing, theology, the visual arts and architecture, poetry, ­music, and scientific studies. Hildegard is unique in that she engages with them all. And she also existed at a time of ­great change in understandings of the universe and its mea­sure­ment and interpretation. For this reason, her work is especially useful in the study of comparative cosmology and the history of cosmology and culture at a particularly fruitful moment in Eu­ro­ pean history. Her obsessions are cosmic in their nature, and in this, she is very much a product of her times; but her ways of dealing with her constant engagement with the universe and its nature and purposes are uniquely her own.

CHAPTER 2

Scivias on the Rupertsberg

The Nature and Structure of Scivias Medieval theologians w ­ ere closely tethered to Scripture, and in a g­ reat variety of ways. Prophetic voices and purposes, which feature in so much of the Bible, had a special fascination, both in shaping ideas about language and in driving the structures of exegetical works. Hildegard spoke in a prophetic voice, not only in what she wrote in prose but also in poetry, in musical compositions, and in what she saw and copied from her visions.1 The fact that she prophesied in a multitude of media separates Hildegard from all other theologians. Th ­ ese differences are most dramatically manifested in her first major treatise, Scivias, especially in the illuminated copy of it that was produced in the last de­cade or so of her life in her own scriptorium on the Rupertsberg, Wiesbaden 1 (W).2 Scivias is divided into three books, and each of t­ hese is made up of a series of visions and commentary on the visions.3 Each chapter then constitutes a report on a vision; in Wiesbaden 1 most visions include a picture designed to represent an aspect of that vision, beginning with a direct statement received from on high commanding the author to write down what she sees and hears. In most of the Rupertsberg manuscripts words of direct address to Hildegard by the Voice of the Living Light are indicated by small comma-­like signs in the margins to highlight them. In the individual commentaries or glosses on the visions, Hildegard quotes from t­ hese direct revelations and explains what the Voice of the Living Light has told her they mean, sometimes directly, sometimes with her own words, and with copious quotations from the Bible to support her interpretations. Hildegard’s treatise is strikingly dif­fer­ent, then, from any of the ­others to which it ­will be compared ­here: its primary texts are the words and images of her visions, and they are prophetic words, coming directly from God in the person of the Living Light and



Scivias on the Rupertsberg

39

supported by Scripture, by the Word of God alone, and not by ­human authors. The ways in which the voice is used in Scivias create a network of knowing that draws the reader ever deeper into their mysteries and, in the end, demands response and participation.4 Dinah Wouters says: “The final goal may be to exhort ­people to change, but the ­will to change must be achieved through knowledge and insight. Therefore, it is better to categorize Hildegard’s visions as Lehrvisionen first and foremost. As such, they belong to the same category as The Shepherd of Hermas and the Showings of Julian of Norwich.”5 At the end of Scivias, Hildegard welcomes her readers to join their voices in song and to witness their own roles in a dramatic exercise. Although she does not provide the notes for ­these works in the treatise itself, the implications are clear. Scivias was written to inspire change through praise and communal participation in ritual action, and this requisite participation resonated for her within and with the cosmos. Indeed, her large-­scale goal was to unite h ­ uman choices and history to the cosmos and its ongoing development from the beginnings of time to its close. Through ­these dramatic and lyrical summations Hildegard encouraged participation in her grace-­ filled experiences. Hildegard’s pedagogical program offers examples of horizontal learning in which a community was both united and ­shaped by common endeavors and practices.6 In the case of the Rupertsberg, ­these practices included hours daily of liturgical song (mostly traditional but some newly composed), common craftsmenship (including work with cloth and with manuscript production), medical treatments, a communal language, and, one assumes, periods for reading and study. The three books of Scivias are or­ga­nized into three overriding subjects, although ­there is a fair amount of repetition of ideas and a variety of interconnections ­running like threads between them: (1) Book 1 is about the creation of the Universe and the Natu­ral World, including h ­ umans, with a brief section on the Jews as the first of God’s ­people, and on the angelic hosts and their relationships to ­humans. (2) Book 2 treats of the creation of a new order, comparing the sacraments of the Old Testament to ­those of the New Testament and the Christian Church; this book is a kind of liturgical commentary rooted in cosmological understandings. (3) Book 3 is about the ongoing building of the Church through the actions of the virtues, ideas that exist in the mind of God and that are transmitted with special power to God’s creatures through the understanding of Christ’s transformative entrance into the world of time.

40 Chapter 2

Chant texts, a truncated version of the play Ordo virtutum, and a commentary on Psalms 148–50 close this book and the treatise, as the universe itself ceases to exist in the world of time and freezes in a bright vision of eternal praise, with the original roundels of the days of creation transformed into medallions featuring the saints (see Chapter 8). At the root of her work, then, stands Hildegard’s view of and relationship to the cosmos and the cosmological understandings of her age. In her view, praise and song are deeply rooted in the nature of the cosmos and its unfolding in time. Hildegard’s cosmological understandings have not hitherto been studied in the context of her ­music, poetry, theology, drama, art, and scientific works, and this study is a beginning at d ­ oing so, working with select images, chants, and the versions of the play, which w ­ ere also of her own design.7 Only Scivias, and only one manuscript of Scivias, provides the opportunity to study her thought in this multidimensional way in material prepared u ­ nder her own supervision: Wiesbaden 1 (W), the subject of this study.

Probable Influences on Hildegard as She Wrote Scivias The library available to Hildegard as she planned out and wrote Scivias (1141–51) cannot be described from concrete evidence.8 In Chapter 1 I laid out some strains in the history of science available to her, offering a sense of what she might and might not have known of cosmology. The Disibodenberg, where she wrote much of Scivias, was a newly founded monastery and so with no tradition of manuscript acquisition or production; what books Hildegard acquired for her new monastic establishment are also unknown.9 In addition to at least one illustrated cosmological work of the kind studied in Chapter 1, Hildegard clearly knew the ­Fathers of the Church, especially as she would have encountered their writings in the Divine Office. Copies of their works ­were commonly found in circulation in the region and many would have been available to Hildegard, although precisely what cannot be said. It can be argued, indeed, that Scivias is a kind of commentary on the views of Gregory the ­Great, especially his sermon on Luke 15:8–10, the parable of the lost coin, as w ­ ill be seen in further discussion. Gregory’s writings are excerpted to provide readings in the Divine Office and so Hildegard knew them well, and within the context of the liturgy. As ­will be seen in ­later chapters of this study, Hildegard knew the Shepherd of Hermas, in one form or another. How she gained access to this rare treatise and to many of the other books sustaining her broad and deep learning remains a ­matter of conjecture. Her ­family was well con-



Scivias on the Rupertsberg

41

nected and her b ­ rother was cantor for some years at Mainz Cathedral, and thus could have supplied her with books; she traveled and visited libraries, and perhaps borrowed from them. But her letters do not mention the acquisition of books or the paths to learning she clearly had somehow established. It is certainly probable that her secretary Volmar made trips to libraries for her and brought back books or notes on books. Hildegard was as much a scholar as she was a mystic, but the foundations of her knowledge are difficult to reconstruct. The critical edition of Scivias can be a guide through its list of probable references to known writings of the ­Fathers and other authors. But many of ­these are suggestions, as Hildegard never cites anyone directly.10 It does seem, however, that Hildegard was influenced by several near contemporaries, although precisely how is difficult to fathom: Anselm of Canterbury’s De casu diaboli, Honorius Augustodunensis’s hexameral writings, and Rupert of Deutz’s extensive commentary De Sancta Trinitate et operibus eius.11 Honorius Augustodunensis is closer to Hildegard in general theological outlook than any other author. ­There is not a sense that she might be responding to him as is the case with Hugh of St.-­Victor discussed below. Rather her general goals and ideals seem near to ­those of Honorius, who was apparently also a Benedictine and a liturgical commentator. In fact, Daniel Yingst’s description of the general purpose of Honorius’s writings about the cosmos could apply to Hildegard as well: “The fact that Honorius does not see nature as a distinct figure possessing her own power and that he rather construes the cosmos as akin to a text, something to be read, does not mean that creation is somehow passive. The theophanic pro­cession of God’s revelation into material actuality and the development of this actuality throughout history is fundamentally active. It has a purpose, an end, and works to achieve it. That purpose is h ­ uman salvation, and in the salvation of mankind the cosmos is restored through the ­union of the microcosmos, that ele­ment of creation encompassing within itself all ­t hings, with its Creator. . . . ​­Every individual creature is a salvific engine, driving the universal machine that strains to lift us from the contemplation of the material world ­towards the truth that lies veiled within it.”12 As mentioned in Chapter 1, Scivias is an early summa, a kind of work just coming into play at the time she wrote. That the nature of the work itself pre­sents something of a revolution in style and structure points to what must have been a major influence on her work: De sacramentis christianae fidei, by Hugh of St.-­Victor. Theologians in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries ­were experimenting with vari­ous strategies for organ­izing their works, from biblical exegesis on single books of the Bible, to theological monographs, to collections of “sententiae,” to, ­later in the c­ entury, commentaries on books of sentences. A “sentence” in this realm

42 Chapter 2

of thought is an opinion or idea found in Scripture or in the F ­ athers of the Church. The Sentences (Sententiae in quatuor libri distinctae) of Peter Lombard begat numerous commentaries in the thirteenth ­century, including works by Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas.13 The summa, then, distinguishes itself as a genre b ­ ecause it places ideas from a range of scriptural sources into a systematic w ­ hole, beginning with creation and closing with judgment and the end of time, and clearly it derives from the sentence collection but is quite dif­fer­ent from it.14 Credit for having written the first book of this type is usually assigned to Hugh of St.-­Victor for his treatise De sacramentis christianae fidei, and so one of the most impor­tant influences on the structure and themes of Scivias seemingly must have been Hugh’s book. It was completed in the final de­cade of his life (he died in 1141), the only model of its type conceivably available to Hildegard as she wrote Scivias. Beyond genre, other features suggest that Hildegard knew Hugh’s popu­lar treatise, at least indirectly.15 ­There are many parallels in regard to themes between the two treatises, and even to their modes of organ­ization. Both contrast the cosmos as created by God in the beginning with the cosmos as ­later redeemed through Christ, and so cosmology and ideas about the extraterrestrial play major roles in both Scivias and Hugh’s De sacramentis. Hugh’s work falls into two books, the first on creation and the Trinity, leading to the Fall and restoration in the time of the Old Testament. Book 2 begins with the Incarnation, and then moves to the sacraments, full redemption, and the end of time. Indeed, I believe that Hildegard’s Scivias may have been designed as a response to Hugh’s extremely widespread De sacramentis, a treatise making inroads into Hildegard’s region in the years in which she wrote Scivias.16 Although he spent nearly thirty highly productive years in Paris, Hugh was a Saxon, who had trained in his early life with the Augustinians of St. Pancras, Hamersleben.17 Hugh of St.-­ Victor began his De sacramentis with the natu­ral world and the Old Testament, and then moved to the Church and its sacraments, but with ­great emphasis on the role of priests, especially ­t hose who are in the mode of Augustinian canons. The sequences written for the canons to sing at their Mass liturgies ­were proclamations of their ways of life as reformed clergy.18 Hildegard, on the other hand, writes as a Benedictine nun, and she puts comparable emphasis in her work on the importance of consecrated virgins and on the role of the Virgin Mary in the Incarnation, a cosmos-­transforming action bringing a new dawn to the w ­ hole universe. The virtues, who play major roles throughout her treatise and in the dramatic work at its close, are female allegories for many strains of goodness; in her dramatic works, Hildegard afforded opportunities to bring the virtues to life and watch



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43

them work. Through their central role in her treatise, Hildegard made room to expand her views of the female in her Christianized cosmos.19 Hugh reasons with the voice of a proto-­scholastic priest; Hildegard reveals with the voice of a nun who is a prophet, composer, and dramatist.20 She creates a parallel track to Hugh’s highly influential work, and one that could have been easily understood as its counterpart within her community and in her region. A major difference between Hugh’s De sacramentis, Honorius’s cosmological writings and other con­temporary treatises, and Hildegard’s Scivias is the way in which her thought unfolds on many tracks and in several media. Hildegard’s systematic pre­sen­ta­tion of the cosmos and its meanings in Scivias is manifested in prose, in poetry, in m ­ usic, in art, and in drama. What is more, her ideas about this topic can be found in other guises in related works, in her l­ater treatises, letters, exegetical exercises, scientific discussions, and in her other chants, including the full version of the play. As her first work, Scivias is foundational. As the stages of creation and Hildegard’s plan of the cosmos are studied ­here in some detail, it ­will be crucial to look at the evidence as it exists in their many guises. Hildegard’s ideas about creation and cosmology are often expressed within all the forms and genres in which she created. Indeed, crucial aspects of her thought are missing without the larger and all-­encompassing view that includes poetry, ­music, drama, and the visual arts as well as theology and science.21 Although in genre and form it is closest to Hugh’s work, in its multimedia dimensions Hildegard’s Scivias resembles the twelfth-­century Speculum virginum. This treatise in dialogue form is now thought to have been written by Conrad of Hirsau and in the Rhineland. It was a textbook for the instruction of nuns, circulating in Hildegard’s region in the years just before she began Scivias. Some copies of it, including one she may have seen, are illuminated, and a few have m ­ usic added as 22 well. ­Here too, Hildegard’s illuminated treatise, produced in her own scriptorium, would have been understood by her own community as a kind of textbook for their instruction, superseding and complementing a model that would have been known to them. But Scivias transcends the Speculum, broadening out to become a work for all Christians to know and learn from.

Repositioning Scivias in Its Liturgical Contexts As with so many medieval artworks—­frescoes on walls of churches, shrines with their precious metalwork, sculptural programs, stained glass, textiles, and illuminated manuscripts—­much more has been lost than survives. More often than not,

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scholars must engage in some kind of reconstruction, from the careful reassembling of precious and fragile fragments of materials to the study of early engravings depicting now-­lost buildings or artworks that give a sense of what once existed. The situation with texts and ­music is equally precarious: it is estimated, for example, that of the many thousands of liturgical manuscripts from the Latin M ­ iddle Ages, less than 5 ­percent survive, and from medieval ­England, where destruction was especially wanton, a smaller percentage even than this. It is not surprising, then, that liturgical books are not known to survive from Hildegard’s monastery (the Rupertsberg) or from the monastery where she was raised as a youth and younger w ­ oman (the Disibodenberg). As seen in Chapter 1, many impor­tant ancient and medieval texts are now believed irreparably lost. Still, to have no traces of books for liturgical cele­bration that w ­ ere once plentiful makes the work of reconstruction especially hard when it comes to a theology like Hildegard’s, which is—­from bottom to top—­informed by liturgical practice. The surviving liturgical book nearest to Hildegard’s geo­graph­i­cal and chronological sphere is Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 103, a lectionary/antiphoner from the late twelfth or early thirteenth ­century, with numerous prayers and other added materials.23 The book has been indexed by William Flynn and is completely searchable on CANTUS, making it a ready source for reimagining the office as Hildegard knew it, an exercise I carry out in Chapter 3 and its Appendix. Work that Felix Heinzer has done on the use of Hirsau, the liturgical sphere in which Hildegard moved, is also very impor­tant. Lori Kruckenberg has studied the sequentiary sung in this practice, and, as Hildegard wrote several sequences, this study is especially useful.24 Twelfth-­century liturgical books from nearby Mainz are few as well, but t­ here is a pontifical copied in the late twelfth c­ entury that has been studied by James Borders and Alison Altstatt, mentioned further in Chapter 7. Nothing can get around the fact, however, that we do not have liturgical books from Hildegard’s monastery or from the Disibodenberg. Moreover, Engelberg 103 is not written in heightened notation and so is a very dif­fer­ent style from that of Hildegard’s musical manuscripts as produced on the Rupertsberg. In our forthcoming study of liturgical fragments from the region, Jennifer Bain and I w ­ ill demonstrate that the type of notation practiced on the Rupertsberg was in use in other local h ­ ouses as well, however. We have local books and manuscript fragments to help contextualize Hildegard’s practice and then we have the precious evidence of Hildegard’s treatises and her m ­ usic as produced u ­ nder her auspices, and t­hese survive thanks to the work of the Rupertsberg scriptorium and to the stewardship of the nuns in the centuries a­ fter Hildegard’s death. Th ­ ere is also a twelfth-­century necrology from



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45

the Rupertsberg, which is useful for study of the institution Hildegard founded.25 The manuscripts of Hildegard’s letters are yet another source that has been of ­great use to students of manuscript production on the Rupertsberg, as well as for understanding her ideas and their development. Surely the scribes on the Rupertsberg, with their probable chief scribe Volmar, copied other books besides ­t hose that survive, and among them would prob­ably have been the graduals and antiphoners needed for liturgical cele­bration. It is at pre­sent impossible to say for sure how Hildegard’s musical compositions fit into liturgical practices on the Rupertsberg itself. Indeed, some scholars have tried to argue that her chants and her play w ­ ere not made for a­ ctual per­for­mance. However, as I w ­ ill argue in forthcoming chapters, it is clear that Hildegard designed many of her chants so they would underscore par­tic­u­lar themes and would magnify the preexisting chants in the Mass and in the Office to which her own compositions ­were certainly linked.26 But the most impor­tant liturgical world for Hildegard’s first chants and her play is Scivias itself, an extraordinary landscape designed to reposition praise and ­human action, and to give both cosmic vitality and importance. Hildegard tells her readers, through Scivias and the inclusion of both texts of chants and a version of the play, that the treatise forms a kind of setting for t­ hese works; it is Scivias itself that offers a context for understanding the chant and drama that she herself created, as well as the liturgy more broadly. B ­ ecause Scivias, among other t­ hings, is also a liturgical commentary, it provides a view of what she thought about the monastic liturgy of her time, especially as celebrated within her community of Benedictine ­women, opening up the world of the liturgical imagination. ­There is commentary in Scivias not only on the liturgy but also on her chants, both their texts and ­music, and on her views more generally of the importance of the liturgy within the life of the community she led. As a result, from this treatise and the liturgical compositions related to it, a ­great deal can be told about Hildegard’s community and her ways of working for and within it. The de­cade in which Scivias was written was a time of major change for Hildegard and her community, who moved from their original location on the Disibodenberg to their new situation some miles away in Bingen just as she was finishing the treatise in 1151. Hildegard dates the years of composition in the preface to the book, and we can only imagine the state of the copious notes and early copies that must have existed already at the time the nuns relocated. The three earliest copies that do survive of it w ­ ere made in her own scriptorium on the Rupertsberg. All three ­were apparently produced in the late 1160s or 1170s, that is, in the final de­cade and a half or so of her life, and quite some time a­ fter Scivias itself was apparently finished.27 The state of the books produced in Hildegard’s lifetime form a backdrop for

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understanding the nature of the illuminated Scivias, the now missing Wiesbaden 1 (W). The books, which include two sets of her compositions, w ­ ere copied in the textual and notational hands appropriate for notated liturgical books for use in the monastery, and the scribes must have worked on t­hese vari­ous proj­ects si­mul­ta­ neously, although none of their liturgical books are known to survive.

Copying Books on the Rupertsberg As Aliza Cohen-­Mushlin has demonstrated in her careful study of St. Pancras in Hamersleben and of St. Maria Magdalena de Frankendal, monastic scriptoria ­were often contained, even isolated, groups of scribes who labored in concert to produce the many books necessary for monastic life and liturgical practice, often with several hands contributing to a single manuscript.28 Jeffrey Hamburger has presented a detailed study of a twelfth-­century manuscript produced in Arnstein, not far from Bingen, and situated it in the context of scribal practices in the region. In his study, groups of scribes who worked to produce books for institutions other than their own are encountered.29 Alison Beach has studied the work of female scribes at Admont in the time of Hildegard.30 The importance of ­women at Klosterneuberg in the production of liturgical manuscripts is well known.31 Thanks to the pioneering work of Marianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkötter, and subsequent studies by Albert Derolez and Michael Embach, a g­ reat deal is known about book production on the Rupertsberg. The work of ­these scholars has been foundational for this study of manuscript W. Schrader and Führkötter ­were the first to prove beyond a doubt that t­ here was a distinctive scriptorium on the Rupertsberg responsible for a group of manuscripts made in Hildegard’s lifetime.32 Indeed it is sometimes pos­si­ble to trace the development of some scribes’ work, although always with caution, ­because distinguishing between the copying and hands of scribes who learned to write together and u ­ nder the same teacher is often a challenge; some of the identifications of Schrader and Führkötter, for example, have been respectfully called into question by Derolez. What follows is an exercise in imagining the probable circumstances within the Rupertsberg scriptorium in regard to the making and copying of one book: W. The book is unique among all the other Rupertsberg manuscripts ­because it is the only codex produced ­there that included paintings. Many scholars write about the Rupertsberg manuscripts as if they w ­ ere copied by men, referencing the scribes by the pronoun “he.” Although ­t here is no direct evidence concerning the gender of the Rupertsberg scribes, Hildegard’s monastery definitely had a scriptorium



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within it, a room for copying books, as can be seen from the description of monastic buildings in a letter by Guibert of Gembloux.33 ­Women w ­ ere pre­sent to copy, too: Hildegard herself mentions a female scribe along with Volmar in the preface to her second major treatise, the Liber vite meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits), and then again in the LDO, in a passage quoted below. I ­will use the pronoun s/he or him/her for the scribes discussed ­here as it seems both men and ­women ­were involved. Hildegard’s “lingua ignota” contains a vocabulary list for the more common implements of a scriptorium, showing that the ­women needed to discuss their work as scribes and book producers.34 ­There are words for: scriptorium; inkhorn; ink; quill pen; chalk; pumice; straight edge; lead; parchment; seal press; red lead for rubrics; saffron (for yellow coloring); wax tablet; stylus; compass. Hildegard’s scriptorium had what was needed for the kinds of work carried out ­there, both with wax tablets and parchment, and for book production, including t­ hose with ­music notation. In their notational practice, ­there was a red line for the f pitch, and a brownish yellow line for c, and of course all the books had plentiful rubrics written in red ink. Red and yellow are the only two colors represented in Hildegard’s vocabulary list. The absence of paints and brushes is to be noted. The nuns, as far as we know, w ­ ere not manuscript illuminators. ­There w ­ ere also several scribes copying in the surviving codices from the Rupertsberg who w ­ ere apparently not trained in the nuns’ scriptorium; some of them appear only one time. How to account for this? Schrader and Führkötter suggested that t­ here w ­ ere two rooms for copying, one outside the monastic enclosure and one inside, so that two groups of scribes, one male and one female, could be working at the same time, passing manuscripts back and forth. Perhaps such circumstances help account for the nature of the illuminated Scivias (W), which could have been painted by professionals in the outside room according to Hildegard’s instructions and sketches, and yet the text copied, for the most part, by the w ­ omen or by Volmar, who seemingly would have worked in both rooms (if indeed t­ here ­were two). ­There was a close relationship between the production of Hildegard’s letters and the scriptoria at the Disibodenberg and the Rupertsberg, and the scriptorium at Zwiefalten, a double monastery where the ­women also had their own copying room.35 Such a shared responsibility for manuscript production between male and female scribes would have been well known to Hildegard through her familiarity with Zwiefalten, a Benedictine monastery also in the Hirsau sphere of influence.36 The states of the letters suggest that female copying was established at the Disibodenberg even before Hildegard and her community moved, helping account for the fact that ­t here must have been a functioning scriptorium operating fairly

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quickly ­after the move to the Rupertsberg and nuns among the group who already ­were experienced scribes (see the Introduction). It is pos­si­ble to divide the Rupertsberg scribes into two groups by chronology. The ­earlier group includes ­those scribes who worked on the first collections of Hildegard’s letters, making t­hese the most impor­tant single genre available for the study of scribal activity in the 1150s through around 1170.37 A variety of copies remain, although none of the ­actual originals or the Rupertsberg copybooks containing the letters survive.38 The copies of the letters themselves fall into chronological stages as well. The earliest stage is represented by three manuscripts: (1) the Zwiefalten collection, which also contains some fascicles copied by scribes from the Disibodenberg and the Rupertsberg, Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253; (2) Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 881, from the third quarter of the twelfth ­century and copied on the Rupertsberg, which parallels the collection now in Stuttgart;39 (3) Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Theol. Lat. fol. 699, a book that belonged to the Cistercian abbey of Maizières, only select folios of which are online.40 In this group it is clear that scribal practices developed on the Disibodenberg s­ haped the work of the scriptorium on the Rupertsberg: ­there was continuity of scribal practice. The second stage in preserving Hildegard’s letters was apparently part of feverish copying activity on the Rupertsberg, assumed to have been supervised at first by Volmar (but ongoing ­after his death in 1173). At some point in this sphere of activity, the letters w ­ ere rearranged by Volmar, we assume with Hildegard’s consultation, to link copies of the originals with copies of Hildegard’s responses; they also ­were rearranged in order by the rank of the person writing to Hildegard, the most prestigious correspondents coming first. The letters ­were dramatically rearranged not only to make a kind of cohesive treatise out of them, a Liber epistolarum, but also to demonstrate Hildegard’s highly respected reputation as a seer. Clearly additions and subtractions ­were made at this point, and, as John Van Engen has pointed out, nearly all of the incoming letters survive as originals only in this l­ater stage, raising many questions about authenticity.41 This second stage is preserved in a thirteenth-­century codex: Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 963, presumed to have been copied from Volmar’s original, and the work emphasizes the importance of Volmar in the production of Hildegard’s materials. A third stage is found in the letters collected in the Riesencodex, which represent Volmar’s rearrangement, but with the editorial overview of Hildegard and her newer secretary, Guibert (or Wibert) of Gembloux, who worked with Hildegard in the last two years of her life, during the time when the ­giant codex (R) was put in its final form and ­after Volmar had died.



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The most varied collection and in­ter­est­ing group of scribes chronologically is that found in the letter manuscript from Zwiefalten, presently in Stuttgart (Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253) and commonly referenced in the scholarship as MS Z.42 This collection is dated to 1153–70 by Schrader/Führkötter and Van Acker/Klaes-­Hachmöller. Estimations of the number of hands it contains vary slightly, with the most recent estimate by Klaes-­ Hachmöller standing at 22 hands, 15 in part I and 6 in part II, with a rubricator too rounding out the number.43 The scribes represent three dif­fer­ent scriptoria, at the Disibodenberg, at the Rupertsberg, and in Zwiefalten.44 Building on Schrader/ Führkötter, Van Acker and Klaes-­Hachmöller provide a t­ able that identifies all the scribes in the manuscript, letter by letter, and associates each scribe with a par­tic­u­ lar scriptorium; another column dates each letter, if pos­si­ble, or provides a range of dates.45 The earliest date or the range of dates of letters copied by a given scribe can provide a terminus a quo for that person’s copying activity. Hildegard’s letters ­were copied in both scriptoria in institutions where she was in residence, and so she must have had personal relationships with t­ hese scribes. This letter collection introduces both the earliest Rupertsberg scribes and a feature of scribal work on the Rupertsberg: it involved a ­great number of individuals. In my essay “Hildegard and Her Scribes,” I suggested that copying was part of the accepted work of nuns on the Rupertsberg and that this practice accounts for the many hands in training ­there.46 If this is correct, copying and other activities in support of the scriptorium are yet other ways in which Rupertsberg nuns encountered Hildegard’s writings. Clearly the production of books mattered greatly to this community. The second group of manuscripts chronologically speaking are the treatises written by Hildegard (as distinct from the letters) and copied on the Rupertsberg. Working on linking the scribes in the letter collections to t­ hose who produced the manuscripts of Hildegard’s theological treatises is only beginning and t­ here remains much to learn. What­ever the case, apparently standing at the head of the scriptorium ­until his death in 1173 was Volmar, who seemingly trained not only text scribes but also m ­ usic notators. If not he, then who? Some person, e­ ither he or someone with his capabilities, must have done the work of organ­izing the scriptorium and training scribes, and this person must have understood how to produce manuscripts from top to bottom, both ­those with texts and ­those with ­music as well. I have argued that Volmar may have been the cantor/armarius of the Disibodenberg before he departed with Hildegard to be her provost and secretary on the Rupertsberg around 1150.47 The illuminated Scivias (W) must be situated in the context of the other surviving manuscripts of the three major theological treatises produced on the Rupertsberg in Hildegard’s lifetime (­Table 2.1). As can be seen, all w ­ ere apparently copied in the last de­cade

­Table 2.1. Manuscripts containing Hildegard’s trilogy copied on the Rupertsberg The three treatises with their dates of composition:   Sciv. = Scivias (1141–51)   LVM = Liber vite meritorum (1158–63)   LDO = Liber divinorum operum (1163–74) 1. Manuscripts containing all three major theological treatises and the Symphonia and Ordo virtutum R Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 2; Rupertsberg, 1175–79a 2. Manuscripts containing Scivias only W Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 1; Rupertsberg, 1170–79 (lost, but black-­and-­white photos exist, as does a color copy of the original made and preserved t­ oday at the Abbey of St. Hildegard, Eibingen) V

Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 311; Rupertsberg, 1170–79b

3. Manuscripts containing the Liber vite meritorum (1158–63) D Dendermonde, St.-­Pieters & Paulusabdij, Abteilbibliothek, MS Cod. 9; Rupertsberg, 1170–76;c and also an extensive fragment of the Symphonia. The copy is gratefully acknowledged by a monk of Villers in letter no. 107, dated to 1176. T Trier, Seminarbibliothek, MS 68; Rupertsberg, 1170–79d Ber

Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Theol. lat. fol. 727; Rupertsberg, 1170–79

4. Manuscripts containing the Liber divinorum operum (1163–74) G Ghent, Universiteit Gent Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 241; Rupertsberg, 1170–74e Cit

Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 683; Rupertsberg, 1170–79f

http://­h lbrm​.­d igitale​-­sammlungen​.­hebis​.­de​/­handschriften​-­h lbrm​/­content​/­t itleinfo​/­449618. https://­d igi​.­ub​.­u ni​-­heidelberg​.­de​/­d iglit​/­bav​_­pal​_­lat ​_­311​/­0012. c The manuscript is online at IDEM (the Integrated Database for Early M ­ usic). It must be searched ­t here for the link using the label: B-­DEa-­ms-9. d A pdf of the manuscript can be downloaded h ­ ere: https://­zimks68​.­u ni​-­t rier​.­de​/­stmatthias​/­TMBi​-­I​ -­0003​/­TMBi​-­I​-­0003​.­pdf. e A digitized copy of the manuscript in pdf is available from the library at no cost. Albert Derolez has published several studies of Ghent 241 (G). G was apparently made directly from Hildegard’s visionary work on wax tablets (or it would seem to me more likely from notes made from the tablets), making it one of the most in­ter­est­ing and impor­tant of the sources that remain for studying pro­cesses of manuscript production on the Rupertsberg. f https://­portail​.­mediatheque​.­g rand​-­t royes​.­f r​/­iguana​/­w ww​.­main​.­cls​?­surl​=­search&p​=­* -­ recordId=2.615&srchDb=2. a

b



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and a half or so of Hildegard’s life, from around 1165–79. Although the dates traditionally assigned to each book are provided in the t­able, ­there has been l­ittle direct evidence offered in most instances to fix t­ hese dates precisely. The surviving Rupertsberg manuscripts provide a unique opportunity to enter into the working lives of a significant group of scribes, including t­hose who worked on W. The scholarship to date, most importantly that of Albert Derolez, suggests several general conclusions about this collection of the writings of a single author from one monastic scriptorium, although much work remains to be done on vari­ous specifics of this fascinating group of codices: 1. The surviving manuscript copies of the major treatises ­were seemingly all produced in the last de­cade and a half or so of Hildegard’s life, suggesting that ­t here ­were clearly many ­earlier copies and other exemplaria produced in the scriptorium that no longer survive.48 G is the only surviving fair copy, and it was in a state that was subjected to significant further editing. All the rest of the codices w ­ ere made from fair copies that do not survive. It is often assumed that the scare in 1170 that Hildegard would die was an impetus for this activity.49 2. The Rupertsberg hands share many characteristics and are often very difficult to distinguish from each other; t­hese scribes w ­ ere all trained by one person, most likely Volmar, who doubtless had assistants in such a lively scriptorium. 3. Although ­there w ­ ere many capable scribes involved in manuscript production on the Rupertsberg and several ­were apparently trained on the Rupertsberg, ­others are involved in the copying who do not write in the characteristic style. ­These are perhaps nuns who arrived ­later in life, but also among ­t hese are the best candidates for male scribes who ­were involved in Rupertsberg book production. 4. Most typically a manuscript involves more than one copyist, suggesting collaborative work of vari­ous kinds, both within the scriptorium itself and perhaps through the involvement of a probable second scriptorium for outsiders. This aspect of the copying underscores the idea that t­ here was an overseer in charge of the scriptorium, or scriptoria, and book production more generally. It seems the impetus for manuscript production came from Volmar and Hildegard, and died with them, or at least paused u ­ ntil the production of materials for the attempt to canonize Hildegard in the thirteenth ­century. Hildegard worked from ­behind a mask of humility, this too a convention that she ­adopted as a ­woman

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and a Benedictine. The claim of authorship by “a s­ imple person” is part of the title given to Scivias in the earliest manuscripts. Her claims about ignorance cannot be taken at face value; nor was she ­really what might be thought of as a ­humble or ­simple person, as many of the conversations in her letters attest. Rather, it is clear that she cared deeply about her legacy and that she and Volmar, her secretary and the provost of the community, w ­ ere determined to earn her works their rightful place in the pantheon of ­human revelation through carefully made and well-­ preserved copies. The materials that survive are a direct result not only of good fortune but also of their industry and planning. Clearly for centuries ­after their production t­hese precious books ­were trea­sured and preserved at the Rupertsberg, keeping the memories of Hildegard’s original work alive. The penultimate paragraph of Scivias, which in W is marked by a large nota bene sign, demonstrates the importance given to this treatise: “whoever rashly conceals ­these words written by the fin­ger of God, madly abridging them, or for any h ­ uman reason taking them to a strange place and scoffing at them, let him be reprobate; and the fin­ger of God ­shall crush him.”50

W: The Manuscript of the Illuminated Scivias MS W, a twelfth-­century illuminated manuscript of Hildegard’s Scivias, has been missing since 1945 and the bombing of Dresden, where it had been taken for safekeeping. ­Because the manuscript itself may not have come through the ravages of World War II and its aftermath, ­t here are many questions we ­will never be able to answer about this illuminated treatise (­unless it can eventually be recovered, something for which Jennifer Bain has held out hope in a recent study of the situation).51 W can be reconstituted, however, at least in certain of its aspects, ­because of two valuable copies made of it before it went missing. One is a full set of black-­ and-­white photo­graphs of the original, which represented state-­of-­t he-­art reproductions when they ­were shot in the early twentieth ­century; they are for the most part clear and easy to read.52 The photos ­were made of the entire manuscript, not just of the illuminations, so the text and its copying can be studied as well through them. Of course, the codicological features of the manuscript cannot be known for the most part, but ­t here is a g­ reat deal of information found in ­t hese reproductions. The photog­raphers ­were clearly not interested in the gutters of the manuscript pages, where further codicological evidence would have lain. The other copy of W (E) was made from the original manuscript in the years 1927–32 at Eibingen, the Benedictine Abbey dedicated to St. Hildegard, founded by



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her in the l­ater twelfth c­ entury.53 How such an accurate copy was made remains something of a mystery, but it can be seen that the script and the illuminations are very near to the originals, and one assumes that the colors of the copies are near matches to the colors Hildegard designated for inclusion in the manuscript. Figure 2.1, W, fol. 86r (a photo from the original) and Plate I (from the copy, W, fol. 86r) are full-­page reproductions of the illumination accompanying Scivias, Book II, vision vi, part 1, Christ’s sacrifice and the Church. ­These have been chosen as examples ­because the wealth of precisely duplicated details demonstrates the closeness of the Eibingen nuns’ copy to the original work. Both also show passages of script for comparison of details between features of Scribe 2, the main scribe, as found in the original and in the copy (Plate I). E was restored by the nuns in their laboratory and book-­binding shop in the early twenty-­first ­century, and full rec­ords and photo­ graphs of that careful work survive at Rüdesheim/Eibingen. The facsimile edition of E was made a­ fter the much-­needed work on the original copy was completed. The manuscripts of Scivias are all briefly discussed in the introduction to the critical edition of Scivias prepared by Führkötter and Carlevaris. Peter Dronke has pointed to some prob­lems with the critical edition, questioning why t­ here is no stemma provided to better understand the nature of transmission and affiliation between the manuscripts.54 Indeed much more could be done, and one hopes it w ­ ill be in the ­f uture.55 When one gets into the weeds of the Scivias manuscripts produced on the Rupertsberg, however, it is easier to appreciate this apparent lack; the situation is very difficult as ­t here are so many ­people involved and the precise nature of the interrelationships between ­t hese sources cannot be fully understood ­until ­t here has been further detailed paleographic study. I ­will explore the nature of just one of the Rupertsberg sources, W, offering tentative hypotheses concerning how and when it may have been produced. But as ­will be seen, the situation with this manuscript alone is highly complicated. Th ­ ere is indeed no way that this brief discussion, focused as it is on a single very impor­tant and now missing manuscript, can deal with the many prob­lems that remain to be solved with manuscript production and scribal practices on the Rupertsberg. ­These precious sources need to be studied codex by codex and scribe by scribe, and our work on W is only a beginning, demonstrating the kinds of attention the collection deserves. Intense paleographical and codicological study of R is now in pro­gress.56 Studying the scribal hands in W as they appear in E is useful for the colors of the rubrics. But the close observation necessary for paleographic study is not pos­si­ble from the painted copy as the twentieth-­century scribes, skilled though they ­were, could not render the letter shapes exactly like the originals. For t­ hose and other details, such as the ruling of the parchment, we depend on the photo­g raphs of the

Fig. 2.1. Communion. Scivias II.vi, from W, fol. 86r, text by Scribe A (Scribe 2 in the manuscript).



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original m ­ anuscript, and even with t­hese the results are somewhat tentative. My study of the three primary scribes who worked on W is forthcoming and ­will include more detailed study of the photo­graphs. I have summarized my findings below, but the extensive detail involved in the study belongs in a dif­fer­ent kind of publication. The state of W based on study of the photo­graphs shows that three main scribes worked on the copying of the original manuscript. All three copied the chapter headings and t­ ables of contents too, as does one other scribe who contributed headings. So all told, ­there seem to be four scribes who worked on copying this deluxe codex, and three of them w ­ ere prob­ably trained in or other­wise part of the significant contingent of scribes working in the Rupertsberg scriptorium. Someone added references to books of Scripture in the margins as well, in tiny letters of a dif­fer­ent style, but con­ temporary to the manuscript. Th ­ ere w ­ ere also multiple artists who painted the flourished capitals at the start of ­every vision, as well as ­those who designed the more modest smaller capitals, which are of two types. Fi­nally we need to count the painter or paint­ers of the illuminations, however many w ­ ere involved. Producing this manuscript was certainly a major undertaking, and many p ­ eople participated in the production of this book, and most likely over a considerable period of time, from ­those who conceived of it to ­those who executed the many aspects of the plan. Many hours of thought must have been required initially to create the design, and then countless more hours w ­ ere required to realize the complex ideas. As such a pro­cess would have taken a number of years—­Hildegard said she “finished” the treatise in 1151 (although what she meant by this is hard to say)—­t he ­actual work of copying the initial fair copy must have begun ­after that time. As I have said, W is the only surviving illuminated manuscript produced on the Rupertsberg, and so it would have required special treatment, beyond the normal work of the scriptorium. As we know from Derolez’s study of G, the production of a fair copy of Hildegard’s major treatises required some d ­ oing, involving constant correction and revision. From the evidence we have about the practices of the scriptorium and the nature of W itself, it seems the following stages would have been required to achieve the final product, now only available for our study in copies. 1. A fair copy of the treatise was produced from Hildegard’s notes, originally transferred from her wax tablets. The ­tables of contents for most of the visions and the headings for the chapters w ­ ere apparently not part of this fair copy. The book took Hildegard ten years to write, so the states of the materials needed to have a fair copy must have been of vari­ous types. Also, of course, in the final years of writing Scivias, the entire ­women’s monastery moved, lock, stock, and barrel, adding to the complexities.

56 Chapter 2

2. ­There would have been choices to make about which of the visions would receive one or two paintings and which aspects of each vision would be emphasized; t­ hese decisions may have been made a­ fter the preface to the entire treatise was written, with the portrait of its author. In addition to this portrait t­ here are 6 visions in Book 1, 7 in Book 2, and 13 in Book 3; 26 visions, so 27 including the description that prefaces the book. But ­t here are in fact a total of 35 paintings. It is clear that the pages where the paintings would be placed ­were carefully planned well ahead of time. Most of them ­were designed in conjunction with the amount of space left for any given chapter headings, and this would have provided some flexibility. However, paintings and chapter headings are usually not located at the beginnings of a fascicle, and this added to the complexity.57 3. The sketches for the paintings must have been made so that accurate sizing could be provided in the laying out of the manuscript for copying. The paint­ ers, whoever they ­were, eventually must have had detailed instructions, and of course they worked from models, what­ever t­ hese may have been (I have suggested the involvement of needlework). But all this needed to be determined before the scribes set to work copying their text blocks, which had to fit into prescribed numbers of pages to accommodate the places for the paintings. 4. The pages ­were ruled in lead with the outlined places for the paintings often left unruled. This feature proves that at the time of ruling the paintings (or plans for the paintings) ­were already sized and their locations and numbers carefully planned. 5. The text blocks w ­ ere copied first, leaving room for t­ ables of contents, paintings, the large flourished initials at the head of ­every vision, capitals for individual chapters of each vision, and room for the headings for each individual chapter. The initial copying of the text blocks themselves also took place in stages and two main scribes w ­ ere involved: Scribe 1, who worked u ­ nder the apparent auspices of Scribe 2, who sometimes corrects the work, and Scribe 2 (our Scribe A in ­Table 2.2), who takes over on folios 58v and 59r and copies the text blocks of the entire rest of the book, an enormous undertaking. 6. Although the spaces left for paintings and for flourished initials ­were usually ample, the spaces left for chapter headings ­were not well planned, and the writers of headings often have to cram in their words, frequently spilling over into the margins. This is another indication that the chapter headings ­were not yet fixed at the time of the text (although the spaces for the paintings ­were!). Space was left for them, but it was not precisely mea­sured to fit the a­ ctual numbers of words.



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7. Apparently over time, as four scribes ­were involved, the ­tables of contents for the visions and the individual chapter headings w ­ ere added. Some w ­ ere even perhaps added ­after the paintings w ­ ere in place. 8. The large flourished initials at the heads of visions w ­ ere added in a variety of campaigns; some of the artists ­were very skilled and some ­were not. Study of ­t hese campaigns would be useful. 9. The initials at the beginnings of chapters w ­ ere added in two campaigns. This work sometimes depends on the arrangement of fascicles but usually does not (see Appendix 1). 10. The paintings w ­ ere added to the manuscript in a next-­to-­last stage of the work, although their additions had been planned long before. 11. Fi­nally, certain missing texts w ­ ere added, including pages that had to be redone, missing ­tables of contents, and missing chapter headings. In at least one instance, I suspect that a new a bifolium was tipped in (fols. 191 and 192). Proper codicological study is a challenge from ­t hese photo­graphs, especially given that the photog­raphers had l­ ittle interest in this science.58

The Main Scribe of W: Volmar? ­ able 2.2 shows the status of the major scribes working in the last de­cade or so of T Hildegard’s lifetime and their roles in the production of the surviving manuscripts of her three major treatises copied on the Rupertsberg; Appendix 1 contains further details of W and the scribes who worked on it. The main scribe of W (Scribe 2) began on fols. 58v and 59r and continued to the end of the book (Figure 2.2; W, fol. 59r). However, we see this scribe ­earlier in the manuscript from time to time as well: Scribe 2 copied headings and some passages of text on ­earlier folios before taking over completely.59 In Figure 2.2, Scribe 2 (Scribe A in ­Table 2.2) copied the first five lines of column A, and then Scribe 1 copied again ­until seven lines up from the bottom in column A, where Scribe 2 took over again and continued for the rest of the page, becoming the main scribe of the manuscript. Scribe 2 in the manuscript, in this example, is easily distinguished from Scribe 1 by the “tur” abbreviation, a small comma on a bar, as can be seen in the top lines of both columns. This scribe also generally does not use the tironian et, and the ampersand has a tall shaft, as also can be seen in the top line of column B. The lower bows of Scribe 2’s g are very rounded and nearly the same size as the upper part of the g (compare to the g of Scribe 1 in column A, line 10 up from the bottom). Scribe 2’s ct ligature is somewhat

58 Chapter 2

­Table 2.2. The four most prevalent Rupertsberg scribes and their work on the Trilogy This t­ able for the most part follows Derolez, “Neue Beobachtungen,” 483. Scribe A (Scribe 2 of W) T: fols. 1v–35r W: much of the second and third books of Scivias, beginning on fols. 58v–59r (from photo­graphs; not online) V: complete text D: fols. 71–121v; perhaps the texts of the Symphonia, fols. 153r–170va contributions to parts of the Necrology; possibly G, fols. 1–26, the ­table of contents (hard to say as the script is so compressed); and Ber, fols. 105r–116v Scribe B Ber: first hand (fols. 1–88) G: fols. 27–138; partially fols. 139–54; fols. 203–14 Scribe C T: appears in fasc. V; copies fols. 48–114; appears in fasc. XV R: fols. 1v–46vb, 23; 49ra–201rb Scribe D (Scribe 3 of W) R: 46vb–48vb; 466ra–481vb W: brief appearances (as indicated in the text) Derolez does not link the first hand of D to any other known scribe in his chart in “Neue Beobachtungen,” 483; in his breakdown of the fascicles of the manuscript and their probable scribes, he does not include the pages that comprise the Symphonia (ibid., 487). Embach, in his breakdown of the manuscript (Die Schriften, 131), says that Scribe 1 of the codex also copied the chant texts. This is a ­matter for further discussion, and one I w ­ ill take up in my forthcoming study of Scribe A. As the first and second scribes of D are very close in many details of their scripts, the question may never be solved with complete satisfaction. a

looped and not broken (see “recte” of column B, next-­to-­last line; and compare to Scribe 1’s ct ligature, column A, line 6, which is broken [“subiectione”]). The first scribe (through fol. 58r) found in W was not trained on the Rupertsberg and does not other­wise appear in the manuscripts tabulated ­here. Scribe 3 (Scribe D in ­Table 2.2), however, is a Rupertsberg scribe. In addition to the work on W, s/he also copied a few pages of Scivias in manuscript R and copied the texts of the Symphonia and the Ordo virtutum as found in R.60 Figure 2.3 (W, fol. 195v) includes the quire signature XXIIII at the bottom of the page. Many features of Scribe 2 (Scribe A in ­Table 2.2) can be observed ­here as well as in Figure 2.2: the tall ampersand, the m/n abbreviation bar made of two side-­by-­side lines, as seen, for example, on line 5, column A on “calceamenta habent, quoniam in.” The distinctive

Fig. 2.2. Examples of Scribe 1 and Scribe 2. W, fol. 59r, in Scivias II.iii.34.

Fig. 2.3. Examples of Scribe 2 and Scribe 3. W, fol. 195v, in Scivias III.ix.14–16.



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genitive plural abbreviation occurs three times on line 6 in Fig. 2.3: “eorum, id est apostolicorum rectorum,” and on many other lines. The looped ct ligature is found on line 6: “intellectuali.” The headings in column A throughout this page, however, have been added by Scribe 3 (Scribe D in T ­ able 2.2). The cast of the letters is quite dif­fer­ent from ­t hose observed in Scribe 2: the ascenders are taller, and rather than forked (as with Scribe 2), they are finished with a hairline to the left. The ct is broken, and the ampersand is squat and has a hairline at the bottom of its shaft. All ­t hese features can be observed in the headings on this page, which have been added by Scribe 3. See, for example, Fig. 2.3, the heading on column A, lines 1–3: “Quod doctores ecclesie ad uiam ueritatis fide et opere perduxerunt errantes.” What was the role of the main scribe of W on the Rupertsberg? T ­ able 2.2 offers the best information for answering this question. As can be seen from this t­ able, the major scribe of W (Scribe 2 in the manuscript and Scribe A in ­Table 2.2) and the role of this person in the work of the Rupertsberg scriptorium are unique in his/her prominence. As ­Table 2.2 shows, Scribe A was more involved than any other in the work of the scriptorium by a significant degree, having a role in MSS T, W, V, D, and possibly minor involvement in G and Ber. ­There is evidence of Scribe A correcting the work of ­others too, as is the case in W. In his chart of hands, Derolez did not list yet another pos­si­ble assignment to Scribe A: the texts for the chants in D. I have added ­t hese to ­Table 2.2, with the warning that the Rupertsberg hands are very difficult to differentiate and this might not be accurate. I also suspect that the prefatory chapter headings for the LDO in G ­were also copied by this scribe, as Derolez also surmised, and I have added this as well to T ­ able 2.2. The Riesencodex (R), Hildegard’s collected works, was copied (or at least compiled) a­ fter the rest of the manuscripts, during the years a­ fter the death of Volmar but before her own death. Ongoing intense codicological and paleographical study of this codex means that more remains to be learned about this book.61 However, it is clear that t­ here was no involvement of Scribe A in the production of the Riesencodex, a book made in the last years of Hildegard’s life. Derolez posits that Volmar’s hand may be that of the main copyist of the Ghent manuscript (G) (Hand 2 in Schrader and Führkötter and in the preface to the critical edition of the LDO), and if this is so, he also copied the first quires of Ber, and would be Scribe B in ­Table 2.2.62 I would propose a second hypothesis for consideration regarding pos­ si­ble identification of Volmar’s hand. Volmar was the head of Hildegard’s scriptorium and a major scribe at work on the Rupertsberg, as tradition and the Hildegard portrait would have it. I believe that if we wish to assign scribal identity to Volmar he is most likely Scribe A. Study of the roles of vari­ous scribes on the Rupertsberg makes Scribe A stand out, not

62 Chapter 2

only as a copyist but also as a corrector and a person exhibiting a role of leadership. But, although Scribe A played a major role in a majority of the surviving Rupertsberg codices, s/he was not involved in the production of the Riesencodex. This is the only compilation that we know was put together a­ fter Volmar’s death in 1173. Other examples of his work may also be found in the letter collections. The editors of the letters in Corpus Christianorum claim that Hand 17 in the collection now in Stuttgart, and discussed above, is Scribe A; and this hand is also found in the Vienna letter collection.63 More remains to be done on this m ­ atter, but to associate Scribe A with ­t hese letter collections could provide yet further indications that Scribe A may well be Volmar. I have argued that Volmar and Hildegard w ­ ere already collaborating on the life of Jutta, work done while they ­were still at the Disibodenberg.64 It is assumed that the person described in the opening of Scivias, the first person to whom she revealed her visions, is Volmar, and he became her helpmate from that time on. The Voice of the Living Light proclaims Volmar’s importance in the preface to Scivias. Perhaps the other part “of the work that leads to me” mentioned h ­ ere was his vital ser­v ice in the production of Hildegard’s works: Hence in my Love she searched in her mind as to where she could find someone who would run in the path of salvation. And she found such a one and loved him, knowing that he was a faithful person working on another part of the work that leads to me. And, holding fast to him, she worked with him in ­great zeal so that My hidden miracles might be revealed. And she did not seek to exalt herself above herself but with many sighs bowed to him whom she found in the ascent of humility and the intention of good w ­ ill.65 Hildegard mentions him again in the prologue to the LVM and in the LDO: “This [writing] is witnessed by that person whom I had sought and found in secret, as I have related in my previous visions; it is also witnessed by that girl of whom I made mention in my most recent visions.” 66 As can be seen in T ­ able 2.2, Scribe A was involved in major ways in the copying of Scivias, being the main scribe for the two earliest manuscripts, W and V. Scribe A copied a major section of the LVM found in Den, and he may have copied an early version of the chapter headings for the LDO. Volmar died before this treatise was finished. In the film Vision (2009), directed by Margarethe von Trotta, it has been assumed that Volmar is in charge of the scriptorium on the Rupertsberg, and that he and Hildegard worked together on the production of the manuscripts containing her writings. This situation undoubtedly grew out of a modern interpretation of



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the famous Hildegard portrait in Scivias, which includes Volmar. The tradition was well established in Hildegard’s lifetime not only through the portrait she designed for W; Volmar is also depicted as a scribe in the late twelfth-­century illuminated copy of Scivias made (not at the Rupertsberg) for the Cistercian abbey of Salem (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Salem X.16). Whoever did the work on this manuscript may have known about W and the tradition on the Rupertsberg of illuminating Scivias. The first painting of the thirteenth-­century copy of Hildegard’s Liber divinorum operum (Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 1942, fol. 1v) also shows Volmar writing on parchment at a desk, while Hildegard copies on wax tablets. This continues the visual tradition of making Volmar responsible for copying Hildegard’s visionary texts. The idea that he was indeed the major copyist on the Rupertsberg is in keeping with this tradition. It m ­ atters greatly to understanding Hildegard’s work as a theologian if indeed Volmar is the main copyist of W. If this is true, some of the arguments about the nature of her relationship to the paintings could be laid to rest or at least modified. Clearly if he ­were the main scribe, his and her role in the planning of the codex, as outlined above, can be assumed from this point onward. In addition, the copying of W shows that Volmar, if he is Scribe A, Scribe 2 of W, worked along with Scribe D, Scribe 3 of W.67 Scribe D copied the texts of both the Symphonia and the Ordo virtutum in R, and so was closely involved with the production of ­music. Volmar himself may have copied the texts for the Symphonia in D, something that needs to be further studied. In any case, the supposition that he was involved with m ­ usic scribes and the production of m ­ usic is also clarified with the introduction of this hypothesis. My own work has proceeded by beginning with manuscript production on the Rupertsberg, then looking at the par­tic­u­lar hands in W, and fi­nally building a case for the probable copying of this manuscript by a major figure, most likely, then, Volmar himself. Should this be right, the portrait at the beginning of W, studied in greater detail in Chapter 3, takes on new meaning. It becomes a visual signature not only of Hildegard’s own work but also of the specific work of Volmar, Scribe A, the hy­po­thet­i­cal main copyist of W. The portrait Hildegard designed honors him not only for his long-­term ser­vice to her proj­ect but also for his specific contributions to this precious and unique codex, a par­tic­u­lar kind of theological treatise.

CHAPTER 3

Cosmology and the Liturgy Hildegard and the One Enthroned

The Hildegard Portrait: Cosmic Visions and the Visionary Ideas about cosmology and creation appear at the beginning of Hildegard’s Scivias, embodied within the now-­famous portrait she had painted of herself at work with Volmar (Figure 3.1 and Plate II). As argued in Chapter 2, the portrait celebrates both her work as author and his work as scribe on the illuminated Scivias. It was doubtless designed from the beginning to open the treatise, as a space was left for it on the recto of folio 1 (W, fol. 1r/E1, fol. 1r). This illumination, one of the smallest in manuscript W, is unique among t­ hose found in Scivias: it shows Hildegard receiving her visual and aural messages from God and the pro­cess by which they w ­ ere then recorded and copied. The “camera” is offstage, so to speak, rather than in its customary location within Hildegard’s mind. In some ways, the illumination resembles medieval portraits commonly made for other well-­known authors, especially for t­ hose to whom books of the Bible w ­ ere attributed: King David was shown as the author of the book of Psalms, usually with his harp, and prophets w ­ ere often depicted standing, scrolls in hand. The four Evangelists can each be found in illuminated Bibles at the openings of their respective Gospels, with their attributes often involved in the design as well. Some medieval Bibles depict St. Jerome as the translator of the Vulgate Bible.1 St. Benedict may appear at the beginning of some deluxe copies of his rule of life, and Gregory the ­Great may be shown with his Book of Pastoral Care (Regula Pastoralis). To position Hildegard’s portrait at the beginning of Scivias, and to design it to incorporate conventional visual aspects of other authors’ portraits, proclaims that Hildegard herself is the designated conduit responsible for the divine revelations contained in the work, while acknowledging the crucial role of her friend and secretary the monk Volmar.

Fig. 3.1. Portrait of Hildegard and Volmar in Scivias, preface: (a) W, fol. 1r, col. A, il, text as copied by Scribe 1; (b) Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Salem X.16, fol. 7r, detail.

66 Chapter 3

Fig. 3.1. continued

But the portrait and its design reveal even more about the nature of Hildegard’s revelations through some of its unique features. Hildegard is seated within an architectural frame, with an implement for writing in her hand and on her lap. The chair and pose are typical for Evangelists at the openings of illuminated Gospel books in the twelfth ­century, but the architectural setting is more often used for l­ater authors. Unlike many figures in portraits from this region and period, however, Hildegard does not hold a pen, or a knife and a pen, and she is not writ-



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ing on parchment. Rather she holds a stylus, apparently with a paddle on one end for correcting, and is inscribing upon wax tablets.2 ­These tools, somewhat rare in authors’ portraits from the period, may suggest that Hildegard is drawing as well as writing. Volmar’s pose and his relationship in the painting to Hildegard provide another unique layer of understanding. The setting may not only be a statement about the relationship between author and scribe, and a reference to the making of this par­tic­u­lar book. It might also make reference to Gregory the G ­ reat and his supposed authorship of Gregorian chant.3 This reference too would add power to Hildegard’s authorial stance, including the m ­ usic as part of the work at hand, and to Volmar’s ability to write down the ­music Hildegard composed. She is not only a new Evangelist but also a new Gregory, for her chants supplement the liturgical chants that, in her lifetime, he was thought to have received from God. The story of Gregory’s reception of the chant is told by the Carolingian John the Deacon, who died ca. 882.4 In the legend, the aide who transcribed Gregory’s writings made a hole in the curtain that separated them with his stylus and was able, by peeking through it, to see the dove sitting on or near Gregory’s ear, demonstrating the divine origins of the chant.5 The most famous portrait ­today of Gregory receiving the chant from a dove and the scribe looking in on the scene is found as a folio in the Hartker antiphoner from ca. 1000.6 The flames that come down and engulf the author/composer/artist’s head as she receives her visions and hears ­music are not like what most authors are depicted receiving when in contact with the divine sources of their inspiration. ­There is no other medieval author’s portrait known to me that depicts flames of inspiration in this way. Traditionally, ­there is a Hand of God, or a dove, representing the Holy Spirit (and indeed the flame in the Hildegard portrait has rays that resemble fin­ gers).7 But Hildegard wanted to make a dif­fer­ent statement about the Living Light, the source of her visions, and her relationship with it. She describes the sensation of God’s presence during her visions in terms of the Sun, of a cosmic power that warms her g­ ently by its rays, and that is what is shown ­here. We know from her diagram of the cosmos that Christ is the Sun (see Chapter 5) and from her entire treatise that she, as a consecrated nun, has a special relationship with him as her gentle and loving bridegroom. The viewer sees Hildegard ­here at a moment when she is flooded by the heat of the Living Light that is Christ, making a connection between the cosmic and the earthly. Volmer looks on calmly, peering at what is happening, and ready to help as her secretary, for Hildegard makes the point that she was not swooning in some sort of mystical trance, hidden away from ­others, while she was receiving her visions: “But the visions I saw I did not perceive in dreams, or sleep, or delirium, or by the eyes of the body, or by the ears of the outer self, or in hidden

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places; but I received them while awake and seeing with a pure mind and the eyes and ears of the inner self, in open places, as God willed it.” 8 Another nearly con­temporary portrait of Hildegard is found in the illuminated copy of Scivias now in the university library at Heidelberg (see Figure 3.1b).9 This copy, not produced at the Rupertsberg, is dated to the l­ater twelfth c­ entury and is the only extant illuminated medieval copy of the treatise known to have survived. Hildegard stands somewhat ecstatically in her own zone of the drawing, above Volmar, brandishing her tablets aloft. Below Volmar copies with a pen on parchment at a desk, in this case in the stance of an evangelist. ­Here the connection between Hildegard’s work and the work of Gregory the G ­ reat is lost. Yet, although the codex was not prepared on the Rupertsberg, ­there are enough correspondences between its small number of artworks with the illuminated chronicle from Zwiefalten to connect it to Hildegard’s monastery, which also had many and close interactions with Zwiefalten.10 The Heidelberg Scivias had the Cistercian monastery of Salem as its probable destination in Hildegard’s lifetime, as can be gathered from Gero, Abbot of Salem, who mentioned reading Scivias, and perhaps from this copy, in a letter to her about his wishing not to accept election as abbot. If the letter is au­then­tic, his words offer a demonstration of the esteem in which some of her works ­were held in certain quarters during her lifetime: “By a special gift of the Holy Spirit that sets you apart from the other members of Christ, you, sweet ­mother, have been sent to witness the end of this world. For truly the Holy Spirit is openly acknowledged and revealed through you and in you, as if speaking through His instrument. I have seen and read the g­ reat sacraments of God’s mysteries that the Lord of all knowledge has opened up to us unworthy mortals through you in the book you have written.”11

Hildegard as a New Adam In her prefatory beginning, Hildegard established relationships to cosmology through allusions to the Sun as the Living Light from Heaven. The first sentence of the treatise Scivias reads: “And behold, in the forty-­t hird year of my earthly course, as I was gazing with g­ reat fear and trembling attention at a heavenly vision, I saw a g­ reat splendor in which resounded a voice from Heaven, saying to me . . . ​‘O fragile ­human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear.’ ”12 To have visions and be a visionary was unusual in the ­Middle Ages, but not dramatically so: p ­ eople could function against a backdrop of some kind of direct



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communication with God and still be respected, even revered. Hildegard was in good com­pany, for she would have known the many who received sacred messages in the Bible, including Ezechiel and John in the Book of Revelation, both of whom w ­ ere inspirational to her, as well as the visionary statements of several Church ­Fathers, including Augustine and Gregory the ­Great, and the visionary experiences recorded in saints’ lives, including that of her own mentor, Jutta of the Disibodenberg. The parallels between Hildegard’s description and the opening of the Book of Ezechiel are unmistakable, and both visions are cosmological, as a quotation from l­ater in the Preface demonstrates when compared to its scriptural model: “Ezechiel, Book I, opening: ‘Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, when I was in the midst of the captives by the river Chobar, the heavens ­were opened, and I saw the visions of God. On the fifth day of the month, the same was the fifth year of the captivity of king Joachin, the word of the Lord came to Ezechiel the priest the son of Buzi in the land of the Chaldeans, by the river Chobar: and the hand of the Lord was t­here upon him. And I saw, and behold a whirlwind came out of the north.’ ” Hildegard, from the Protestificatio (Preface) of Scivias: “It happened that, in the eleven hundred and forty-­first year of the Incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, when I was forty-­two years and seven months old, Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my ­whole brain, and inflamed my w ­ hole heart and my w ­ hole breast, not like a burning but like a warming flame, as the Sun warms anything its rays touch. And immediately I knew the meaning of the exposition of the Scriptures, namely the Psalter, the Gospel and the other catholic volumes of both the Old and the New Testaments.”13 Hildegard’s visionary experience described at the opening of Scivias not only established links to the Sun and the heavens, and to other figures with otherworldly experiences and influences. The ways in which the light comes to Hildegard give the opening a hexameral cast as well, developing within a complicated and subtle strategy of intertextual influences between the opening and other passages in Scivias. Hildegard described herself as ashes, filth, “laid low on the earth.” The “cracks in her heart” w ­ ere closed up so she would not “exalt herself in pride.”14 It is the warming of the rays of the Living Light upon this h ­ umble bit of filth that transforms her into a seer. The Protestificatio to Scivias is a study of beginnings, especially with a focus on Hildegard’s beginnings as a prophet for her own times and as a consecrated virgin. ­These themes from this preface set the stage for the creation of Adam, described in Book II of Scivias: “­after the other creatures w ­ ere created, the Word of God, in the strong ­will of the F ­ ather and supernal love, considered the poor fragile m ­ atter from which the weak frailty of the h ­ uman race,

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both bad and good, was to be produced, now lying in heavy unconsciousness and not yet roused by the breath of life; and warms it so that it is made flesh and blood, that is poured fresh warmth into it.”15 The Living Light irradiating Hildegard at the opening of Scivias introduces the major “character” of the treatise, of whom much more ­will be said in chapters to follow: the second person of the Trinity and the agent of all creation. It is he that made Adam as well from a clod of mud—­poor fragile ­matter—­warming him with the same verb used to describe Hildegard’s “creation” as a seer. Adam, the first person (the word “homo” is used throughout in this passage, rather than “vir”), who like Hildegard was created out of fragile m ­ atter, was formed of the four ele­ ments: earth, air, ­water, and fire. It is this material, the four ele­ments, that binds the h ­ uman being so tightly to all of creation.16 Adam soon received visions and a sense of all knowing, as Hildegard described in her treatise Cause et cure: “When Adam was nothing but earth, fire aroused him, air woke him, and w ­ ater poured through him so that he began to move. Then God caused him to fall into a deep sleep. . . . ​W hen he woke up, he was a prophet of heavenly realities and understood ­every power of creation and how to do every­t hing.”17 Hildegard’s understanding of Adam and his revelations also related to states of purity and humility, just as did her own calling. God chose her b ­ ecause she was without “joy or lewdness” and feels “fear and grief” rather than “joy and wantonness.” Adam is described in Cause et cure as having undiminished visionary powers ­until he sinned, but not a­ fter. A text that further explains Adam’s visions can be found in the seventh fascicle of Hildegard’s letters. This contains several short meditations upon many subjects. Epistle (so called) 385 relates the stages of creation to hours of prayer and contains a fuller view of Adam as a visionary with prophetic knowledge:18 “God appeared to him in the eastern part of Paradise, but he did not see God’s face, only the brightness of his face. Then, upon Adam, joyful in his awareness, God sent a slumber [see Gen. 2:21], and so, like a child before his ­father, he slept happily in his desire for sleep. And while he slept, God lifted his spirit up onto that height from which He had first sent it into his Body, along with the knowledge of good and evil. And t­ here God revealed to him in advance all of the events that w ­ ere to come, that is, about his ­f uture generations all the way to the end of time and the filling of the heavenly city of Jerusalem [Heb. 12:22].”19 Contained in the knowledge that Hildegard says was revealed to Adam are many of the subjects of Hildegard’s treatise Scivias. ­These are established at the very beginning through the creation of the several parallels with the first created person. Hildegard is, in a sense, an Adam, newly warmed, irradiated, and chosen ­because of her purity and humility to be a spokesperson for revelations about cos-



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mos, creation, and the place of ­human beings within both. And like Adam, she is given visions that reveal a holistic understanding of history and the building of the heavenly city of Jerusalem, a topic of major significance in Scivias. Adam had the gift of prophecy; so too Hildegard. The beauty of Adam’s prelapsarian voice was emphasized by Hildegard in her famous letter to the prelates of Mainz, written in 1178–79: “before he [Adam] sinned, his voice had the sweetness of all musical harmony. Indeed if he had remained in his original state, the weakness of mortal man would not have been able to endure the power and resonance of his voice.”20 ­There was also a kind of sound that Adam knew before he fell, as Hildegard reports in Cause et cure: it was the pure sound of the monochord, we can imagine, tuned perfectly. Adam, like Hildegard, was a musician too: “Before his fall, Adam knew the angels’ song and e­ very form of ­music and had a voice like the sound of the monochord. However, as a result of his fall, through envy, the serpent infested his marrow and his abdomen with a kind of wind; it is still pre­sent in ­every ­human. Through this wind, a person’s spleen becomes fat, and thereby inappropriate intemperance, hilarity, and echoing laughter are set loose.”21 If Hildegard knew Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, then the ­music of the heavenly spheres would have been understood as having a ­great range as well, as does the m ­ usic of Hildegard’s visions as she and Volmar transcribed it, and as she set it to words.22

Why the Feast of All Saints? The manifold connections between the calculations of liturgical time and the study of astronomy pre­sent throughout the Latin M ­ iddle Ages have been explained in Chapter 1. Christian liturgical practices w ­ ere completely rooted in the mea­sur­able rotations of the Sun and the Moon and their ever-­changing interrelationships. Well-­educated Christians ­were taught in monastic or cathedral schools and trained their minds to work in prayer, with a variety of exercises steeped in t­ hese cosmologically governed liturgical practices. The most elaborate and widespread of t­ hese was the singing of the Divine Office throughout the hours of the day. Hildegard, in her inviolate state as a consecrated nun and operating out of a topos of absolute humility, hears in a sense as Adam heard and sees as he saw. Her par­tic­u­lar understanding of sound and sense was surely rooted in the daily cele­ bration of the monastic Office.23 Knowledge of the Office and singing it by heart year in, year out could provide a sense of being able to hear and see and understand

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many ­things all at once, as the Office combines the texts of the Psalms, readings from Scripture, and readings from hagiography in ­every day of its cele­bration. The vantage point offered to t­ hose celebrating the Office supports the kinds of knowledge Hildegard’s visions offered.24 Hildegard may be suggesting in the text of the Berlin Fragment of Cause et cure that Adam, before the fall, spoke a language that was inclusive of all meanings.25 Hildegard created a new language too, through a new set of words but also through the mystical symbolism of her manifold works, works growing out of her practice of singing the liturgy, day in, day out. An abridged example of just one day’s worth of sung prayer is found in Appendix 3, featuring texts and themes that w ­ ere sung and intoned in Hildegard’s region on the Feast of All Saints, November  1, as found in an early thirteenth-­ century lectionary/ antiphoner from her region.26 The feast is fundamental to understanding Hildegard and her treatise Scivias ­because Hildegard was consecrated as a nun at the age of fourteen on All Saints’ Day. This feast, then, was the day of her new creation and her dedication to God as a bride of Christ. The day of her consecration is known from two sources: the Chronicle of the Disibodenberg and the recorded life of Hildegard’s mentor Jutta, with whom Hildegard was consecrated along with another younger girl. From the Chronicle: “So on the Kalends of November (November 1) the venerable lord abbot Burchard, then in the last year of this life, enclosed her [Jutta], with two s­ isters and herself the third, in homage of the divine Trinity. On that very same day, in the presence of the F ­ ather mentioned above she made profession of monastic life, and being strengthened by the Holy Spirit (Acts 9:31), she followed it with all her heart.”27 From the vita: “1136 . . . ​The lady Jutta of divine memory died, having been enclosed for twenty-­four years at Disibodenberg; she was the ­sister of Meinhard, Count of Sponheim. This holy ­woman was enclosed on the Kalends of November (1 November) and three o ­ thers with her, that is Hildegard and two o ­ thers sharing her name, whom while she lived she strove to imbue with holy virtues.”28 The texts and chants of the Mass and Office in general possessed a kind of authority that no medieval Christian would challenge: they w ­ ere believed to be paralleled by an ongoing liturgy in heaven that had vari­ous ways of mirroring and inspiring the liturgy on earth (see Chapter 5). The forms of monastic prayer ­were fundamental to Hildegard’s life as a Benedictine nun and to the shaping of her ideals and imagination, yet too often this body of texts is not considered in evaluating her theological treatises, a lack that I hope to remedy to a degree in this study. The monastic Rule of St. Benedict, by which Hildegard lived and upon which she



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wrote a commentary, contains a large and highly influential set of chapters on the structure of the Divine Office and the ordering of its psalmody, laying them out so all 150 Psalms ­were sung once a week. Monastic modes of prayer depended not only upon vari­ous mea­sure­ments of the days and seasons. They also relied upon arts of memory, the abilities of prac­ti­tion­ers to recall the prayers of one hour, day, or season while celebrating another, thus bringing them together with ever deeper richness. Such a practice could inspire visionary experiences, and, as can be seen from numerous accounts, the Mass and hours of prayer easily spilled over into mystical realms.29 Still, t­ here ­were rules and conventions regarding the ways visions of vari­ous types ­were to be expressed. Barbara Newman says: “In order to be considered au­t hen­tic and reliable, a vision must have come directly from heaven: its authority could not survive any acknowledgement that it had been sought or improved upon by the seer.”30 Hildegard was careful to make this point, not only in the very first sentence of Scivias but throughout subsequent passages as well. At the close of the Protestificatio she said: “I spoke and wrote t­ hese t­ hings not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, ‘Cry out therefore, and write thus.’ ”31 In what follows I w ­ ill argue that of all the feasts of the church year, Hildegard chose All Saints to inform the opening of Scivias, and the themes and ideas of the feast are central as well to the meanings of the entire treatise and its structure. Her understanding of the feast, and its liturgical texts, provided a bank of resources that related directly to the mystical relationship of a consecrated nun to the high feast of the Lamb, one of the most impor­tant images expounded in the liturgy of the day. The texts are also the foundation for the painting that introduces Book I of Scivias, as discussed below, a work that forms a counterpart to the portrait described ­earlier, which introduces the Protestificatio.32 To reconstruct this feast, I have used the late twelfth-­or early thirteenth-­century lectionary and antiphoner Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 103 (hereafter Engelberg 103). ­There has been much discussion of this liturgical book, with some scholars believing that its origin was the Benedictine monastery dedicated to St.  Disibod where Hildegard spent her youth and was consecrated as a nun. But, as Tova Leigh-­ Choate has demonstrated, this is not likely: although St. Disibod is mentioned in the book, he has no ­great prominence. It has also been shown from paleographic study of both texts and of musical notation that the book was copied neither in the Disibodenberg nor at the Rupertsberg.33 Clearly, however, it does represent the

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Benedictine office as celebrated in the immediate region, perhaps even at Sponheim, where Hildegard lived as a child.34 The influence of the Hirsau reforms on the liturgical practice found in this book are clear as well, as Felix Heinzer has argued.35 It is, therefore, an excellent witness to the liturgy Hildegard prob­ably knew when growing up and that she took with her to the Rupertsberg from her original community at the Disibodenberg. Not only, then, was Hildegard formed within the confines of this liturgical practice, so too w ­ ere the other nuns ­under her care. Most of the chants found in this ser­vice ­were sung throughout Eu­rope for this prominent and impor­ tant feast, and only the ways and order in which they ­were arranged ­were regionally unique. But special to the region and to Hildegard’s community was the fact of consecrating nuns on this par­tic­u­lar feast day, and so the feast called to her and to ­others of her community in all-­encompassing and power­ful ways. Through the reconstruction of the office of All Saints in Appendix 3 it is pos­ si­ble to gain a view of texts she heard and sang on a day of transformation, a time of beginning, and surely one of the most dramatic turning points in her life. Alison Altstatt’s recent work on the taking of the veil as described in the twelfth-­century Mainz pontifical (Paris, BnF, lat. 946) is useful for understanding the Ordo virtutum in par­tic­u­lar, and the Feast of All Saints as Hildegard knew it forms the context for this more detailed understanding of the play.36 The liturgy of All Saints is foundational not only for the opening of Scivias, and for Hildegard’s dramatic work, but for the rest of the treatise as well, establishing both themes and formal structures and offering resonances that would have been readily understood by the nuns in Hildegard’s community. As has been demonstrated in Chapter 1, synchronicity of events over time was fundamental to medieval ways of thinking about the cosmos and history. Honorius Augustodunensis, for example, divided his Imago mundi into three books. The first is focused on the cosmos, the second on how time is mea­sured, and the third on the stages of ­human history. Through this structure, this much-­read twelfth-­century theologian advances the idea that cosmic action and organ­ization reflect history and time.37 This notion underlies Hildegard’s understanding of her own new creation, relying as it does on her consecration as a nun as a cosmic event and with an entire chapter of Scivias dedicated to the cosmic implications of the Eucharist (Book II.vi, to be discussed in Chapter 5). The treatise would have challenged e­ very nun in Hildegard’s community, and indeed e­ very reader, to become a saint, one with the community of p ­ eople who are venerated at the close of Scivias (see also Chapter 8). Scivias is about the ways of the Lord, the methods for achieving sanctity when on life’s journey. The Feast of All Saints commemorates ­those who made it to the end.



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In any major medieval feast, the most impor­tant text, the one from which all other meanings radiate, is the Gospel, which was intoned both at Mass and in the Office. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:1–16, was the Gospel reading for the Feast of All Saints, November 1, the day on which the blessed who have gained entry to heaven are celebrated in the liturgy. In this Gospel, the blessed ones ­were called forth by their par­tic­u­lar virtues, the qualities that informed their goodness: 1. And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. 2. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying: 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4. Blessed are the meek: for they s­ hall possess the land. 5. Blessed are they that mourn: for they s­ hall be comforted. 6. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst a­ fter justice: for they s­ hall have their fill. 7. Blessed are the merciful: for they ­shall obtain mercy. 8. Blessed are the clean of heart: for they ­shall see God. 9. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they s­ hall be called c­ hildren of God. 10. Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11. Blessed are ye when they s­ hall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: 12. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very ­great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that w ­ ere before you. 13. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith s­ hall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. 14. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. 15. Neither do men light a candle and put it u ­ nder a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the h ­ ouse. 16. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your F ­ ather who is in heaven. In the Feast of All Saints the saints are celebrated rank by rank, loosely following the form of the Gospel text, which speaks of the blessed ones in order. Further, the saints are compared with the angels throughout, for both groups are pre­sent in the eternal praises of paradise. And of course, the saints are charged to let their

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light shine forth, to glorify through proclamation, as Hildegard was d ­ oing with her writings. On the Feast of All Saints in Hildegard’s region, this Gospel might have been introduced in the Mass liturgy by an Alleluia, the text of which reads: “The sound of joy and victory [is heard] in the tents of the just.”38 The Notkerian sequence “Omnes sancti seraphim” was surely sung in Hildegard’s region and most likely in her monastery.39 It is a work making a parallel between the rows of the angelic hierarchy and the ranks of the blessed saints, ideas that are foundational to Scivias. It was surely an inspiration for Hildegard’s own responsory for the angels, “O uos angeli,” the text of which is included in Scivias III.xiii, which also brings in the angels, rank by rank.40 Notker’s call is to congregants to find themselves worthy to join in a heavenly act of praise. In this text the nine rows of angels are to be joined by eight rows of saints, the ­people forming a ninth. The ­widows mentioned in Notker’s poem are a group that Hildegard especially found worthy, as can be seen both in Scivias and in the chant she wrote to celebrate them, “O pater omnium.” 41 The sequence “Omnes sancti seraphim,” by Notker Balbulus (d. 912) and its mode of organ­ization: 1 All holy seraphim,    cherubim, thrones And dominions, principalities,    powers, virtues 2 Archangels, angels:     praise and honour befit you, 3 Ninefold order    of spirits blessed. 4 You whom charity has made strong in the praise of God, 5 Strengthen us frail h ­ umans with your prayers, 6 So that valiantly conquering     our spiritual depravities with your help 7 Now and unto eternity we may be worthy     to participate in your sacred solemn rites. 8 You whom the grace of God made able to conquer earthly t­ hings 9 And to become companions to the angels in heaven: 10 You patriarchs, prophets, apostles,     confessors, martyrs, monks, virgins, 11 And the multitude of holy w ­ idows     and of all pleasing to God on high:



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12 May your assistance 13 Now and forever 14 Sustain and protect us as yours, this we pray     on the day of your cele­bration.42

The Office of All Saints Notker would have celebrated the office of All Saints at Sankt Gallen, and it formed a basis for his chant.43 The hours of prayer for the feast as found in Engelberg 103 complement ideas found in Notker’s sequence but add several more themes as well, incorporating numbers of carefully chosen psalm texts. At the close of Vespers on this feast t­here was a pro­cessional antiphon in praise of the Virgin Mary and the saints. ­Because of the emphasis on the beatitudes through the Sermon on the Mount, the qualities of the saints, especially justice and fear of the Lord, come up repeatedly in ­these office texts. “Christe Redemptor,” the hymn sung at First Vespers, lists the saints rank by rank, and the Just are emphasized in the psalter antiphons for this hour of prayer as well, just as they are in the Alleluia chant quoted above. The themes of the feast relate strongly to the purpose of time and its duration, as can be seen at the very beginning of the feast and in its third nocturn as well. The Magnificat antiphon from First Vespers glorifies the praises of the white-­ robed saints at the Lamb’s high feast from Apocalypse 7.44 In this chapter of the final book of the Bible, ­t here is emphasis on the number of the “sealed” saints who ­will be pre­sent with Christ at the end of time. They are 144,000, a mystical number comprised of ­people from ­every one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and ­after them a countless multitude of ­peoples from ­every type and clime all praising God, with the angels who also surround the Lamb’s throne. The Magnificat antiphon at First Vespers from Apoc. 7 is paralleled by that for Second Vespers at the close of the feast, which is from Apoc. 19, the vision of the mystical wedding of the Lamb. In this way the two cele­brations from the end of time are drawn together into one liturgical office. The mystical wedding was often used as a meta­phor expressing the relationship between a nun and Christ,45 and Hildegard herself drew on this commonplace in Scivias.46 Hildegard was profoundly engaged with the number of saints that ­will be achieved, prefacing and pondering the end of time, as ­will be discussed in several chapters of this book. Matins, the long ser­v ice in the ­middle of the night, offers a complicated set of ideas about the saints and demonstrates how particularly suited this part of the Divine Office would have been for the consecration of nuns, with its emphasis on

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the Virgin Mary and on some texts that would relate readily to the lives of ­t hose who await the bridegroom, interpreted as Christ. Matins is divided into three units called nocturns.47 Each of t­ hese consists of a number of intoned psalms or a canticle with antiphons, and intoned readings, with e­ very reading followed by a long chant, a responsory with its verse.48 ­There w ­ ere some differences between Matins in the secular office and the Benedictine office, the latter being what Hildegard would have known and what is represented in Appendix 3. For the Benedictine office ­there ­were twelve psalms (or groups of psalms standing in for one) with antiphons, twelve readings with twelve responsories and their verses, and one canticle with an antiphon—­t hus a vast amount of chanted materials. The first nocturn opens with a set of six psalms, all of which have been chosen for their relationship to the feast and its meanings. In each case, the antiphon framing the psalm relates directly to qualities of holy ­people, especially to the just.49 ­After the singing of ­these psalms, the nocturn continues with a set of four readings, each followed by a ­great responsory, as is the tradition in the Benedictine office. In this case the readings w ­ ere excerpts from a sermon written about the remodeling of the Pantheon in 609 to become a church in honor of the Virgin Mary and the saints.50 The responsories, however, work through the saintly hierarchy, beginning with the Trinity and then followed by the Virgin Mary, the angels, and the first Christian prophet, John the Baptist.51 Subsequently, the second nocturn opens with six psalms, beginning with a verse from Psalm 33 in praise of t­ hose who fear the Lord. Through this elaborate exegesis, the psalm texts resonate with the Gospel and its cata­log of the blessed, including Fear of the Lord. Four readings also from the same sermon follow, each se­lection punctuated by Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, and Virgins. Two of t­ hese chant texts describe the coming of the bridegroom. The third nocturn contains a long, intoned reading from the canticle of Ezra (chapter 8), which describes the bringing of golden and sacred vessels to Jerusalem and the weighing of them to achieve the correct number: “watch ye and keep them, till you deliver them by weight before the chief of the priests.” It is clear that the comparison is with the saints who are precious in the eyes of the Lord, and whose number ­will be meted out before the high priest, who is Christ. Of course this is another expression of the idea advanced in the opening of the feast: that t­here w ­ ill be a specific number of elected saints. Hildegard develops the idea of a golden number of saints, a theme crucial to the development of Scivias and to her vision of the cosmos as a finite structure with a purpose depending on h ­ uman choices on the path to salvation.52 On the eve of her consecration, Hildegard would have been inspired to won­der about ­t hose who ­were included and ­t hose who ­were not within this “golden” reckoning. The chant “In principio” studied in Chapter 8 emphasizes the



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“golden number.” It is found at the close of the notated Ordo virtutum, and its text with commentary forms a major section of the LDO. The third of the nocturns also features four readings, but ­t hese are first from the Sermon on the Mount and then short excerpts from Augustine’s treatise on this text. The readings are punctuated by four responsories praising the saints as ­t hose who fear the Lord, as ­t hose who ­will be the consorts of angels, and lastly the Poor in Spirit. It ­will be seen that ­t here is ­great emphasis in this final nocturn on the very allegorized virtues who stand at the foot of the One Enthroned in the opening image of Scivias, Book I, discussed below. As can be seen in Appendix 3, the responsories in the first two nocturns are borrowed from or shared with other feasts, but three of ­these last four responsories are proper to All Saints. In the Benedictine office, the final responsory had pride of place and was customarily intoned by the head of the community, in this case, Hildegard. Throughout her life as the leader of this community of ­women, ­every year at All Saints, she would have begun this chant: “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, a liturgical testimony to the topos of humility that inspires the Protestificatio.”53 It is of ­great importance to notice the readings for the offices of the Octave of All Saints, that is, for the days of the week a­ fter the feast. As stipulated in Engelberg 103, fol. 44r, the text to be read throughout the month of November on ferial (non-­feast) days was Ezechiel, beginning with book 1 and continuing throughout. So the first text that would have been heard by Hildegard during the week of her time as a newly minted nun described the glorious vision of the prophet, a text already cited in Chapter 2 as a model for the opening of Scivias. Hildegard the visionary seer was in good com­pany. The antiphons that would have been sung for the prophetic readings in the month of November, including the first week of that month, are found in Engelberg 103, fol. 169r, and the texts are also crucial for understanding the painting accompanying Scivias I.i. The first antiphon resonates with the texts of All Saints and the Sermon on the Mount: “Vidi dominum” (Can 005404), from Isaiah 6:1 and 3: I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and elevated and all the earth was filled with his glory and his train filled the ­temple. Vidi dominum sedentem super solium excelsum et plena erat omnis terra majestate ejus et ea quae sub ipso erant replebant templum. The antiphon text is further inspiration for the One Enthroned, the subject of the first painting in Scivias ­after the portrait, discussed below.

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­There ­will be reference made throughout this study to the texts for the Feast of All Saints as Hildegard encountered them on the day she became a nun, and on ­every other All Saints’ feast, as well as to the setting of the feast in November, a month in which prophetic readings w ­ ere intoned and served as the texts of chants for the historia of Matins. This would have been for her, and for e­ very nun in her community, a time of special commemoration, and a purpose of the treatise is to relate the lives of ­t hese ­women, and by extension of all ­people, to creation, time, and the cosmic value of their choices. The answers to why Hildegard designed her summa as she did, perhaps as a kind of response to Hugh of St.-­Victor and other theologians whose works she may have known, are rooted in liturgical practice and in her understanding of it, especially as it related to and defined what it meant to be a Benedictine nun. Hildegard’s visions as recorded in Scivias both instructed the ­women in her community and proclaimed to all who could read the treatise the glories of both the saints and the unique place of consecrated w ­ omen within the entire panoply, and indeed as major players in the purpose and nature of the cosmos itself. In Chapter 8, the responsories ­will be discussed in greater detail, since the ways in which they outline the categories of the saints form the foundation for Hildegard’s Scivias chants, and the end of the treatise as ­whole, with its final illumination and the song of a new creation a­ fter time has ended. Through the sophistication of the modern planetarium, we can reconstruct the sky and its appearance on the eve­ning and the day Hildegard became a nun, November 1, 1112. Plate IV shows an image of the state of the Moon on that eve­ ning. Although our imaginations could run wild with speculative interpretations comparing Hildegard’s sky to certain features of the Cosmic Egg as an in­ter­est­ ing exercise, it does make a bond between our work and Hildegard’s understanding of who she was and how her life and work ­were woven within the cosmic enterprise to see the sky she saw on the eve­ning of her special day and how her first theological treatise became a massive call to sanctity, to the building of the New Jerusalem.

The Second Painting in the Illuminated Scivias Allusion to the Feast of All Saints would have been especially meaningful for the members of Hildegard’s Benedictine community, more so than for any other group of p ­ eople. The feast provided a layer of meaning that for them would have been profound, perhaps a secret knowledge that might serve to bind them more closely together. Both of the images that open Scivias are crucial to fathoming



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the meaning of the treatise as ­whole; the first is a portrait, one that shows Hildegard at work, seeing and hearing the visions that form the substance of the treatise. The work draws her into acts of creation and makes of her a kind of Adam, revisited and expressed in a new guise. The second image has been coded to represent themes found in the liturgy of All Saints but fused with ideas and imagery from the Rule of St. Benedict. The painting has been designed to challenge the h ­ umans at the center of the cosmos, especially the Benedictine nuns in Hildegard’s own priory, to choose wisely in their thoughts and actions. In this view, individual salvation depends upon ­those choices, but so too does the entire universe, and the duration of time it has to run the course in its pre­sent form. The themes found in the Rule and in the feast as celebrated on All Saints’ Day are woven through Scivias and, as ­will be seen in Chapter 8, through the group of chants whose texts Hildegard chose for the end of her treatise. The first image in Book I of Scivias (­after the portrait, which belongs to the Protestificatio) is of Christ in majesty, seated on an iron-­colored mountain on high; h ­ ere Christ speaks from the mountaintop, offering a clear reference to Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel reading for the Mass and for the Office of All Saints (Figure 3.2 and Plate III). In this image, Hildegard drew together two foundational sources for her life and the lives of the ­women in her community: the Rule of St.  Benedict and the Feast of All Saints, reinterpreting both in the pro­cess and uncovering commonalities to create a new and holistic statement in the painting and her commentary upon it. As mentioned above, the One Enthroned also embodies the text for the first antiphon of the historia for the month of November (Isaiah 6:1 and 3, which Hildegard also would have been singing at the time).54 Two shadows appear wing-­like from the Christ enthroned on the mountaintop (see Figure 3.2 and Plate III). ­These shadows represent that “both in admonition and in punishment ineffable justice displays sweet and gentle protection and perseveres in true equity.” This is then, in one sense, Christ on the seat of judgment as well. From this immovable and permanent throne the One Enthroned speaks to Hildegard, demonstrating that his voice is that of the Living Light, and making yet again the connection between him and the Sun, the source of light and of life in the Hildegardian cosmos. ­Here again, as in the Protestificatio, Hildegard is addressed as warmed and fragile dust, whose ability is to fathom the meanings of scripture and express them (that is, as she interprets the instructions, to create a systematic sentence collection). The mountain itself is filled with small win­dows, each of which has two heads within it, a bright one and a pale one. This is a mountain of choices, signifying that “the aims of ­human acts cannot be hidden or concealed”

Fig. 3.2. The One Enthroned. Scivias I.i. Text as copied by Scribe 1, from W, fol. 2r, col. B, detail.



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from God. The all-­k nowing One Enthroned is a God that examines ­human choice, but ­t here are helpers, the virtues, two of which are depicted ­here, as representative of a larger group. For Hildegard, the ­will to choose between good and evil is exemplified by drawing scripture into the spheres of Benedictine life and into the cele­bration of the liturgy. At the foot of the One Enthroned are two figures. The one on the left is completely shrouded by a garment covered with eyes; on the right is a short ­human in white shoes, her face irradiated by a stream of brilliant light from on high, making a parallel of sorts to the Hildegard portrait. The first of ­these, Fear of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom in the Rule of St. Benedict. In the prologue of the Rule the brethren are charged to rise and sing prayer in the night hours, thereby to learn Fear of the Lord: “Let us arise, then, at last, for the Scripture stirs us up, saying, ‘Now is the hour for us to rise from sleep’ (Rom. 13:11). Let us open our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with attentive ears the warning which the divine voice cries daily to us, ‘­Today if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts’ (Ps. 94[95]:8). And again, ‘Whoever has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit says to the churches’ (Matt. 11–15; Apoc. 2:7). And what does He say? Come, My c­ hildren, listen to Me; I w ­ ill teach you the fear of the Lord’ (Ps. 33[34]:12).” In chapter 7 of the Rule, Fear of the Lord is seen as the first degree of humility, with a reference to Psalm 35:2 and to the unjust who have no fear before the eyes of the Lord. In the context of explaining Fear of the Lord, the Rule emphasizes that the eyes of the Lord see all, and no choice can be hidden from them, the very message that Hildegard used in her description of the mountain-­like throne of Christ in Heaven, with its base concerned with h ­ uman action: “Let him recall that he is always seen by God in Heaven, that his actions everywhere are in God’s sight and are reported by angels at ­every hour. The prophet indicates this to us when he shows that our hearts are always pre­sent to God, saying: ‘God searches hearts and minds’ (Ps. 7:10); again he says: ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of men’ (Ps. 93:11); likewise, ‘From afar you know my thoughts’ (Ps. 138:3); and: ‘The thought of man ­shall give you praise’ (Ps. 75:11).”55 The garment worn by Fear of the Lord references the all-­seeing, all-­k nowing powers of God but also is a literal translation of Psalm 32:18, “the eyes of the Lord are on them that fear him.” Eyes are “on” Fear, painted on her garment. As can be seen in Appendix 3, Fear of the Lord appears several times in the texts of the Feast of All Saints, and in prominent positions. The first two antiphons of the second nocturn mention this beatitude: Antiphon 2.1: “Fear the Lord, all his saints, for nothing is lacking to ­t hose who fear him; behold the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and his ears on their prayers” (Can 005151, with Psalm 33) and Antiphon 2.2:

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“Lord, hope of the saints and tower of their strength, you give inheritance to ­t hose fearing your name and they ­will dwell in your tabernacle forever” (Can 002390, with Psalm 60). And t­ hose who fear the Lord are mentioned in the first responsory of the third nocturn, No. 3.1: “Sing praise to our God all his saints, and you small and ­great who fear God; since the Lord our God all power­f ul w ­ ill reign, let us rejoice and exalt and give him glory; Elected offspring, holy tribe, purchased ­people, be mindful of God and praise him (Can 007079). The Magnificat antiphon for Second Vespers of the Feast, like the responsory, makes this attribute a component of praise: “Give praise to our God, all you saints and you that fear him, ­little and g­ reat; for the Lord our God the almighty w ­ ill reign; let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him” (Can 003950). Christ speaks from a mountain to his disciples, and the description is of the qualities of blessedness; the first of t­ hese is the Poor in Spirit, to whom belongs the kingdom of Heaven. Just as Fear of the Lord is the first in the Rule of St. Benedict, so the Poor in Spirit is the first group of the blessed mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount: “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Hildegard described the virtue Poor in Spirit in Scivias I.i with words that are reminiscent of the Rule of St. Benedict, referring to the small figure to the viewer’s right at the bottom of the painting, who is an allegorization also of the virtue Humility: “Fear of the Lord holds fast in ­humble devotion to the blessedness of poverty of spirit, which does not seek boasting or elation of heart, but loves simplicity and sobriety of mind, attributing its just works not to itself but to God.”56 The noun elatio occurs several times in the Rule as something to be guarded against. Sobrietas is one of several features to be coveted in an Abbot. But the most impor­tant parallel between Poor in Spirit and the Rule of St. Benedict is the major role given to the virtue Humility in the Rule, the virtue which is like unto the beatitude Poor in Spirit. Humility is the crowning virtue in the Rule, and the discipline of achieving it is described in terms of a ladder, with reference to the dream of Jacob in Genesis 28: “by our ascending actions we must set up that ladder on which Jacob in a dream saw angels descending and ascending (Gen. 28:12) . . . ​Without a doubt, the descent and ascent can signify only that we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility.”57 It reigns supreme in importance in the Rule, just as Poor in Spirit claims its own position at the summit of the Office of All Saints, as the subject of the twelfth and final responsory, the chant that Hildegard most likely intoned on the feast as the leader of the community. Her connection to this text was intimate: she proclaimed it within community at the most solemn moment in the night Office.



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The two allegorized figures, Fear of the Lord and Poor in Spirit, in the lower range of the painting are crucial to the meaning of Scivias also b ­ ecause of their role in inspiring the hosts of virtues whose work is of central importance throughout the treatise. Hildegard says the virtues are sparks “darting fire in divine glory,” and they surround with help and protection ­t hose “who truly fear God and who faithfully love poverty of spirit.” In the final chapter of Vision I, Hildegard makes direct reference to the beatitudes, for the truly impoverished person is one who remains “idle in the face of won­ders of the works of beatitude.”58 The virtues and the beatitudes and the saints are intertwined in this allegorical understanding of the quest for goodness and salvation. At the end of the Gospel reading of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:16), Christ warned his disciples as he did Hildegard in the voice of the Living Light, to be a light for the world. In Hildegard’s vision, then, the two “figures” standing at the foot of the mountain in the image embody characteristics of blessedness especially prized by Hildegard. They are repre­sen­ta­tions of ideas expressed in the basic texts of her life as a Benedictine nun and also of the liturgy, especially a liturgy of ­great importance in her life and formation, as described above. Hildegard also features Fear of the Lord in her sung play the Ordo virtutum, as ­w ill be seen in Chapter 7.59 The command was to go forth, as a disciple, very like that command Hildegard heard in the opening visions related in Scivias. But Hildegard’s reliance upon the Sermon on the Mount goes even deeper than ­t hese ideas; her reasons for placing it at the beginning of her g­ reat first treatise relate to her own rebirth, paralleling the references in the prologue to Adam and the creation of humankind. It is the text she heard intoned and commented upon on the day of her consecration. It can be seen that t­ here is g­ reat emphasis in the final nocturn of the Feast of All Saints on the same allegorized virtues who stand at the foot of the One Enthroned in the opening image of Book I of Scivias. Hildegard’s image is a commentary on the many meanings of the office for All Saints’ Day, as reading through the texts and commentary in found in Appendix 3 further reveals. Hildegard was exploring the many meanings of the mountain that appeared in the first vision related in Scivias. She positioned both the allegorical and the personal set of meanings this mountain had for her deeply with the liturgy, drawing on a set of texts and chants that she would have known by heart, as would all members of her community.60 Hildegard’s sources are, we have said repeatedly, notoriously difficult to identify. However, ­t here is sure footing when it comes to the liturgy and the well-­k nown sources of her region and time. She knew ­these texts: she read them and sang them, day in, day out. When t­ here are resonances with par­tic­u­lar passages, the context and meanings are clear. Large-­scale images,

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such as ­t hose found in Scivias I.i and its accompanying exegesis, are often rooted in the complex themes of liturgical cele­bration as well. This mode of interpretation would have been readily perceivable by the members of Hildegard’s community, most of whom would have entered religious life in the same way she did. The full mystery of the image and its allegorical meanings would have been difficult for o ­ thers to grasp, although all medieval Western Christians, especially monastics, knew the texts for the Feast of All Saints and would have understood the allusions to the Rule of St. Benedict as well. But for the nuns, this was their day, and Scivias was designed to offer a secret cele­bration of its meanings right at the start. The members of the community would have had privileged access to the meanings of paintings, too, for as they copied the texts of Scivias and studied them, they also watched Hildegard’s sketches come to life before their eyes as they ­were doubtless involved in copying them, in one medium or another.

The Sequence Text for St. Rupert “O Ierusalem aurea ciuitas” (O Jerusalem, golden city) is a sequence Hildegard composed for the patron saint of her new community on the mountain in Bingen, where ­t here had apparently once been a shrine dedicated to him. Hildegard was responsible for the resurrection of his cult, writing both chants and a vita for his feast, celebrated on May 15.61 As notes to the edition and translation of Hildegard’s Vita Ruperti reveal, ­t here has been much discussion of the cult and Hildegard’s works for it, and ideas about dating the vari­ous components she created abound. Discussion ­here ­will be only of the ways in which this chant text relates to Hildegard’s ideas about sainthood, tying it to her “mount” as depicted in W for Scivias vision I.i (see Figure 3.1), and to the identity of her community. Hildegard’s sequences, like all her chants in any genre, are respectful of tradition regarding formal properties, but also expand the norm, making each chant and category of chant a “new song,” one in parallel with the sounds of the heavenly Jerusalem. “Nova cantica” or “nova sequentia” are terms used by scholars to refer to chants and to songs in which the strophes consist of rhythmic poetry, verse that depends on accent, rhyme, and syllable counting to make its strophes.62 Most notable in this style of text and ­music are the Victorine/Pa­ri­sian sequences, first composed in ­great numbers in the twelfth ­century.63 The style, which has its roots in the hymn repertory, and in early sequences as well, caused something of a revolution in the composition of liturgical poetry in the ­later eleventh and twelfth centuries, continuing into the ­later ­Middle Ages. In singing such works, choirs



Cosmology and the Liturgy 87

and soloists steeped in the tradition would become aware of joining in with something uniquely dif­fer­ent from the texts of ­earlier medieval plainsong. Hildegard’s chants, including her sequences, are not novae canticae, as usually defined in con­temporary scholarship. The texts are not rhythmic poetry, and none of her compositions relate to the new styles then achieving popularity in many regions of Eu­rope in the twelfth ­century. Musicologists in recent years have emphasized the strong connections of Hildegard’s ­music with traditions developed in German lands in the l­ater eleventh c­ entury. Th ­ ere is no denying this, and yet Hildegard frequently exceeds the bounds of expectation, even when t­hese con­ temporary traditions are taken into consideration. “O Jerusalem” is such a piece. The work has been much studied, with each scholar depicting its musical organ­ ization in a somewhat dif­fer­ent way. ­Table 3.1, adapted from an essay by Jennifer Bain, shows the several understandings that scholars have had about the form of the piece and the ways the ­music organizes the text into units.64 I prefer the plan ­Table 3.1. Musical settings of “O Jerusalem” compared Strophe incipits in bold are ­t hose where the settings diverge. U ­ ntil strophe 4b, they are in agreement. Incipit

Bain

Newman

Pfau/Morent

Klaper

O Ierusalem O edificatio Tu enim es O beata Nam tu Fenestre tue In quibus O tener flos O vas nobile In Te symphonizat Quod vas decorum

1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 3a 3b 4a 4b 5a 5b

1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 3a 3b 4a 4b 5 6

1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 3a 3b 4a 4b 5 6

O Ierusalem Deinde muri tui Et ita turres Unde vos Et O tu Ruperte Succurrite

6a 6b 7a 7b

7 8 9 10

7a 7b 8 9

1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 3a 3b 4a 4b 5 6a 6b 6c 7 8a 8b 9a 9b 9c

SOURCES: Bain, “Hildegard of Bingen: ‘O Ierusalem,’ ” 35; Newman, Symphonia, ed. Newman, 192–97; Pfau and Morent, Hildegard von Bingen: Der Klang des Himmels, 212; Klaper, in Lieder: Faksimile, 42–44. As can be seen, Klaper divides his strophes 6 and 9 into three repeating musical phrases.

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offered by Michael Klaper in his transcription and have followed it in my parsing of the text (­Table 3.2). In this plan two strophes stand out as unique: strophe 5, emphasizing the theme of the Holy Spirit “symphonizing” within the patron saint, and strophe 7, which concerns the “lost sheep” who have become stones blazing with the light of their redeemed glory. Hildegard’s sequences hark back to Notker and are in the tradition she would have grown up singing in the Mass liturgy. Th ­ ese works unfold in couplets paired by common ­music but use single lines as well, especially at the beginnings and ends of works, as can be seen in the sequence for All Saints by Notker discussed above. But Hildegard’s sequences depart from the Notkerian sequence form as well, expanding the ways in which the verses are treated, using the ­music to create not only doublets but also triplets, all the while varying the length of lines even with musical pairs, and using methods of truncation and expansion strophe by strophe. Sequences in general are made from syllabic settings of the texts, but Hildegard, both in “O Ierusalem” and in her other works in the genre, employs some short melismas too, when and where she chooses, ignoring the sense of the regularity that is often characteristic of the genre. Compared to her antiphons and responsories, Hildegard’s sequences are relatively easy to sing, suggesting that indeed she composed them for the community. Just as importantly, Hildegard works with par­tic­u­lar melodic formulas throughout this and ­others of her sequences, sometimes making it difficult to say precisely which lines w ­ ere meant to be paired, as t­ here is a g­ reat deal of repetition. This repetition also makes this piece, and other sequences, relatively easy to learn. In “O Ierusalem,” as with Hildegard’s chants and their forms in general, ­there is often some kind of development over the course of the piece, from more formal structure to less, and then with a kind of reining in at the end. The sequence “O Ierusalem” is one of the most transcribed and analyzed of Hildegard’s chants, and I w ­ ill not add to the many studies with yet another transcription. My interest rather is in the way the chant makes a statement about community, and one that is closely related to the importance of the Feast of All Saints and the themes found within it. I would argue that this, as with many of Hildegard’s chants, is well or­ga­nized as far as mode/maneriae are concerned. As Jennifer Bain has pointed out, her ­music belongs to an eleventh-­century emphasis found in theorists and composers in her region in the ­later eleventh ­century, with a strong emphasis on the octave, the fourth, and the fifth pitches of the range. Even when she expands the expected tessitura, this emphasis remains. Her m ­ usic is also powerfully rhetorical, with a carefully crafted attention to words and phrases, and this helps account for its immediate appeal. “O Jerusalem” is a fairly tame piece by comparison to ­others in Hildegard’s repertory. As can be seen in ­Table  3.2, the

­Table 3.2. “O Jerusalem,” with strophes or­ga­nized by ­music and musical repetitions Str.

Text

Range of the m ­ usic

1a 1b 1c 2a

O Jerusalem, golden city, decked with royal purple: O building of supreme of goodness, light never darkened: You are made lovely at dawn and in the Sun’s heat. O blessed childhood, you glow ruddy at dawn, O praiseworthy youth, you burn in the Sun.

d–­aa; g final

2b

For you, noble Rupert, shone in t­ hese like a gem. So you cannot be hidden by fools, as a mountain cannot be concealed by a valley. Your win­dows, Jerusalem, are especially embellished with topaz and sapphire. While you gleam among them, O Rupert, you cannot be hidden by tepid ways nor the mountain by the valley—­t he mountain crowned with roses, lilies and purple in a true revelation. O tender flower of the field, O sweet green of the apple, O burden without pith not bowing the breast with sins. O noble vessel, neither polluted nor devoured in the dance of the ancient cave, nor weakened by the ancient destroyer’s wounds. In you the Holy Spirit makes symphony, for you are joined to the angelic choirs and adorned in the Son of God, since you have no stain. What a beautiful vessel you are, O Rupert!

3a 3b

4a 4b 5 6a 6b 6c 7 8a 8b 9a 9b 9c

In childhood and in your youth you sighed for God in the Fear of God, In the embrace of Charity, and in the sweetest fragrance of good works. O Jerusalem, your foundation laid with glowing stones—­with publicans and sinners, who had been lost sheep. But, found by the Son of God, they raced to you and w ­ ere placed in you. So your walls gleam with living stones that flew like clouds in the sky through the supreme zeal of goodwill So your towers, O Jerusalem, gleam ruddy and bright with the rosy glow and the sparkling white of the saints, and with all the ornaments of God which you do not lack, O Jerusalem. O adorned ones, O crowned ones, you who dwell in Jerusalem, And you, Rupert, their companion in their dwelling: Help us who serve and l­ abor in exile.

entire scale, d–dd with upper ee ornament; g final

d–dd with upper ee ornament; g final

d–­dd; g final

d–­cc; g final d–dd with upper e ornament; g final

d–­g; g final d–­f; g final

d to dd with upper ornament; g final

SOURCE: Klaper, in Lieder: Faksimile, 42–44; En­g lish translation by Barbara Newman in Symphonia, 197–99.

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range is not excessive. The only strophe that is dramatically higher than the ­others is no. 7, describing the “publicans and sinners,” t­ hose lost sheep that are featured in Scivias and in the Ordo virtutum. The organ­ization of the text of this long work following musical repetitions demonstrates how Hildegard used her setting, ­here in a genre where double-­ versicle form is the expectation, to put vari­ous ideas in parallel and thus to strengthen the power of their proclamation.65 “O Jerusalem” is an exposition of many of the themes and ideas most dear to Hildegard, and in singing it the ­women in her community ­were proclaiming their identities as nuns tutored by Hildegard, ­people whose actions within the community ­were vital to the building of the Church. The sequence relates to a conception of their patron Rupert as one of them, a virgin, a servant of the Church. In the poem the mountain where the community dwells becomes emblematic of the holy mountain of the One Enthroned, a city of saints. ­W hether she wrote it as she finished Scivias and looked to the dedication of her new community, or somewhat ­later, cannot be known, but the interrelationship between the treatise and the sequence is strong. Both encourage her own community in their ser­v ice to the Church, drawing parallels between the lives of consecrated virgins and the importance of sainthood in a cosmic scheme related to time and eternity. In this work, Hildegard imbues the masculine sanctity of the patron with themes and language often applied to consecrated virgins. “O Ierusalem” is a chant that fuses devotion to the cult of Rupert with the work of the saints in building the structure of the Church, stone by gleaming stone, soul by soul. In d ­ oing so, Hildegard melds three liturgical sets of themes: t­ hose for the Feast of All Saints, for the Dedication of the Church (her own to St. Rupert), and for Rupert himself. She brings Rupert’s own attributes as a saint to the fore and links them to her own ideals of the role of virgins in the eternal song of praise sung by the saints and their angelic counter­parts. This idea is fundamental to Scivias and to Hildegard’s work as a theologian. Singing theological ideals within community was a way of establishing and celebrating identity, of becoming within the liturgy itself what the words proclaim in the act of singing.66 Medieval sequence repertories ­were often in flux, being transformed generation by generation, often to fit the needs of the par­tic­u­lar religious groups who created them.67 In this poem, Rupert is ensconced in the mountain of his cult on Bingen, which becomes an image for the holy, gleaming Jerusalem, emblematic of paradise. He is described through language borrowed from the Song of Songs, and often applied to the Virgin Mary: the flower of the field, the ­rose, the lily, and the apple, which in this case relates to his life-­generating greenness, his viriditas.68



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Rupert’s virginal body is an unpolluted chalice, whose “wine is never drained” through the sexual dance within the cave.69 The Holy Spirit makes a symphony within Rupert’s soul, joining him with angels, decorated by Christ, as he too is without stain. Rupert has learned both the virtues Fear of the Lord and Charity, two themes emphasized by Hildegard in her defense of monasticism found in the Ordo virtutum. Hildegard’s patron saint as enshrined in the sequence is marked by characteristics described in Scivias II.v, her discussion of t­ hose in holy ­orders, monks and nuns. All saints who served the Church in virginal states sing amid the shining stones and jewels of the New Jerusalem, with the One Enthroned as the source of the sound. Men who serve the Church and keep their virginity are ­Daughters of Zion, a phrase also applied by Hildegard to the virginal virtues of her Ordo virtutum. She says of men who serve, with special reference to bishops: “Hence, as you hear, all t­ hose who in their desire kept their integrity for the sake of celestial love are called ‘­daughters of Zion’ in the celestial habitations; for in their love of virginity they imitated My Son, Who is the flower of virginity. Therefore the sounding echoes of the blessed spirits and the outpouring of voices and the winged decorations of happy minds and the golden vision of shining stones and jewels are all with them. How? ­Because the Son of God grants them this, that a sound goes forth from the Throne in which the w ­ hole choir of virgins joins in singing with g­ reat desire and harmonizing in the new song, as John, the beloved virgin, testifies (­here a quotation from Apoc. 14:3, the new song before the throne).”70 The mountain in Scivias I.i (see Figure 3.2 and Plate III) serves as the throne of the Divinity. Unlike the throne in Scivias II.v, which is the heavenly Jerusalem, this throne represents the Church as well, but in this case the parallel is to the Church in heaven: the Church on earth, with its ­people struggling, but inspired by virtues and saints, t­ hose who stand against the Devil and his minions. In Rupert’s mountain as described in “O Jerusalem,” the frames of the win­dows dazzle with the jewels of sanctity, filled with a new song. In the mountain of Scivias I.i, the win­dows all have twin heads, both white and pale, t­ hese representing the choices that each person has to make on the road to sanctity. The counterpart, the glories of sanctity shining on the win­dows, turrets, and walls of this counter-­mountain, is made complete in the Rupert sequence, as the ranks of the saints are counted among the blessed, cajoling t­ hose who toil in another place, far below them, and requesting help for the journey. In the ninth and final strophe of the sequence Hildegard set three lines to parallel melodic lines, joining the saints in the Holy Jerusalem to Rupert, the patron, and to the members of Hildegard’s community, creating through a musical parallel a complex and resounding image of sanctity.

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The first vision of Scivias challenges all readers to come to the One Enthroned, climbing the Mount of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and the Mountain of the Rupertsberg described in the sequence. And t­hose who proclaimed their lives and their purpose within this song ­were to be strengthened by it in their own ­trials, while remembering the vows taken at the very beginning, on All Saints’ Day. On this day the community sang with hope: “Lord, they who work justice ­will dwell in your tabernacle and ­will rest in your holy mountain” (Can 002369), the mountain of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the mount of St. Rupert.

CHAPTER 4

Hildegard and the Hexameron

The Trinity and the Agent of Creation The relationships of both Adam as the first h ­ uman and Hildegard as one of Adam’s successors as a consecrated virgin are essential for understanding how the visions concerning the creation of the universe in Scivias function and what they are about. Hildegard and her two companions w ­ ere consecrated on November 1, 1112 “in homage of the divine Trinity,” giving the w ­ omen a symbolic connection 1 in this act of creation to the threefold Godhead. To deepen this connection, on the day Hildegard become a nun, the first g­ reat responsory of Matins on All Saints’ Day was in praise of the Trinity and related its force to the totality of the cosmos: “Let us bless the ­Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit; let us praise and exalt him above all forever. Blessed are you Lord in the firmament of heaven, glorious and worthy of praise” (Benedicamus patrem, Can 006339, sung also on the Feast of Holy Trinity).2 In Scivias Hildegard emphasizes that it is a Trinitarian Godhead creating the cosmos and all the creatures within it.3 Accordingly this triune God is without beginning and end, and it is represented by the shape of a wheel, with the outermost part representing God the ­Father: “Fatherhood is like the circumference of a circle; fatherhood is like a complete wheel. Divinity is in it, all comes from it, and without it t­ here is no creator.” 4 This notion is firmly rooted in the Christian understanding of time and creation, as seen in vari­ous authors’ works cited in Chapter  1. Scivias II.ii contains Hildegard’s fullest description of the Trinity and its creative powers, relating them to her vision of a dazzling light.5 She says the bright light represents the ­Father, the figure the Son, and the blazing the Holy Spirit.6 ­These three are “inseparable in Divine Majesty,” and all are involved in creation: “The ­Father is declared through the Son, the Son through Creation, and the Holy Spirit through the Son incarnate. . . . ​it is the F ­ ather Who begot the Son before the

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ages; the Son through Whom all ­t hings ­were made by the ­Father when creatures ­were created, and the Holy Spirit Who, in the likeness of a Dove, appeared by the baptism of the Son of God before the end of time” (Scivias II.ii.2, 161–62). This wheel within a wheel, a creative force of luminous splendor, is shown in the image accompanying Scivias II.ii (Figure 4.1). The image has three parts. As can be seen in Plate V, it is painted in gold and silver, with waving lines of gold in the silver section representing the ­Father; in the golden part representing the blazing Spirit, the thread-­like lines are red. The h ­ uman figure standing for the Son is sapphire blue, and although located within the golden section, he is surrounded by a silvery layer that comes down from the top and connects to the outer part of the wheel. Hildegard says that taken together the three inseparable components are like a stone and like a fire, each of t­ hese having three aspects as well. Two of the parts w ­ ere clearly covered with gold and silver paint in the original manuscript, perhaps making this the most strikingly luminous of any of the paintings. T ­ oday it jumps out at the eye in the painted copy found in MS E (see Plate V), the sapphire figure of Christ surrounded in silver adding to the effect. The components constitute a round, glowing wheel with a ­human figure in the center, only motionless ­because of the medium, and somewhat comparable in design to the wheels with Christ as the center in Munich Clm 14399, a twelfth-­century copy of the Hexameron of Ambrose of Milan, fol. 52r.7 Hildegard’s correspondence with the scholastic Odo of Soissons relates h ­ ere b ­ ecause it took place during the years she was writing Scivias. She says on the nature of the first person of the Trinity, referencing the circle: “Whoever says that God is not paternity and divinity names a point without a circle, and if he wishes to have a point without a circle, he denies Him who is eternal. And whoever denies that God is paternity and divinity denies God, b ­ ecause he wants ­there to be some void in God. And this is not true. But God is plenitude, and that which is in God is God.” 8 The wheels of creation found in the Rothschild Canticles, which postdate Hildegard’s lifetime by over a ­century, demonstrate the vivid imaginativeness of this visual tradition in the extreme.9 The artist has created multiple Trinitarian “wheels” and has displayed them in a variety of contexts, wrought by several dif­fer­ent kinds of materials and marginalia.10 Jeffrey Hamburger says of the display: “Above all, the formal complexity of the Trinitarian miniatures translates into an emblematic richness that indicates a profound understanding not only of Trinitarian theology but also of the potential of the image as a vehicle of mystical elevation.”11 One of the most provocative of ­t hese images, Rothschild Canticles, fol. 100r, shows the Trinitarian wheel also as the cosmos, with a knot in the center, surrounded by the seven circles of the Ptolemaic diagram of the cosmos (see Plate VI).

Fig. 4.1. The Trinity in the Unity. Scivias II.ii, from W, fol. 47r.

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The final rim is surrounded by rays of light. The image hides what cannot be seen, the three persons of the Trinity, although representative sets of legs and arms emerge from b ­ ehind this cosmic screen. The unseen Trinity stands b ­ ehind the created cosmos, and from the top the “hand of God” emerges, extending into an architectural display, the heavenly Jerusalem. The city has three doors, and the “hand” rests in the ­middle of the three. The image is both striking in its statement about the totality of Trinitarian force standing b ­ ehind the entire cosmos and playful, even amusing, as well.

The Trinity Expressed in Lyr­ics and M ­ usic “O uerbum patris,” one of a handful of Hildegard’s lyrics that survives without ­music, shows the second person of the Trinity as part of the wheel-­like power, demonstrating the ever-­close linkage between Hildegard’s poems and the Scivias paintings and exegesis. The power is shared among the three completely intermingled yet distinct ele­ments of the triune Godhead and the entire universe, its ele­ments, its history in time, and its purposes, showing they are foreknown even before the wheel that inspired hexameral action has begun to do its work.12 This idea, basic to Christian theology, as has been demonstrated in Chapter  1, also found berth in the artistic traditions represented above. The cosmos begotten by the Trinity through the Word has both beginning and end, but the triune God is eternal, as is the knowledge of the created universe. O Word of the ­Father, You are the light of the primal dawn in the rim of a wheel, accomplishing all ­t hings in divine power. O foreknowledge of God, You foresaw all in your works As you willed, So in the midst of your power it lay hidden that you foreknew them all, and you acted as if in the likeness of a wheel encompassing all, a sphere that had no beginning nor is it cast down in the end.13



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In “Laus trinitati,” an antiphon in praise of the Trinity, Hildegard connects the creative threefold forces of the Godhead to light and the first act of creation as described in Genesis 1:1–5, once again with allusion to ­music, in this case to the angelic song of praise. The antiphon embodies several of the compositional techniques commonly employed by Hildegard, including reiteration of musical materials in ways that underscore the meanings of par­tic­u­lar vocabulary and further define the form of her text. Th ­ ese basic techniques w ­ ere mentioned first in discussion of “O Ierusalem” in Chapter 3, a sequence in which repetitions verse by verse would be required of the form itself. But repetitions of vari­ous sorts are a hallmark of Hildegard’s compositional style regardless of the genre, and of her understanding of the heavenly sounds of the angelic choirs, a sound reflective of Christ himself, the ­music that was born in Mary’s womb.14 Analyses such as that offered for the fairly ­simple antiphon “Laus trinitati” w ­ ill be developed further in more detailed analyses to follow throughout the book and in a systematic way. In ­t hese studies of several of Hildegard’s compositions, I want to keep the conversations focused on text-­music relationships, using vocabulary that is generally accessible to t­ hose who do not have professional training in ­music and musicology.15 Hildegard is a visual thinker, a composer who sees images that relate to musical meaning as she creates texts for her melodies, often using graphic strategies to make her points. Although ­every piece is a kind of world unto itself, ­there are larger, more general ways of working as well. For this reason, it is easy to make ­mistakes, to assume that a waving line means ­water, when it just might be a waving line making reference to another part of a given piece. The significance depends on context, and each work must be studied carefully in order to understand what Hildegard has done with text-­music relationships within in it. It is for this reason that, although the musical examples have been chosen in the study to build upon each other, each works in a somewhat individual way. In general, Hildegard’s compositional pro­cesses rely on expansion and contraction of the musical material she sets out in the beginning of a piece, as is the case ­here in “Laus trinitati.” She also divides her compositions into sections that demarcate the longer lines and phrases within her texts. Then through vari­ous strategies of repetition, she joins individual phrases, putting ideas and themes in parallel, as is the case with the sequence for St. Rupert studied in Chapter 3. In this well-­established system of working, she is able to indulge in frequent examples of word painting as well, varying her techniques from piece to piece. As is the case with so many of her compositions, Hildegard creates ideas and themes through ­t hese musical couplets or triplets, although each restated phrase is usually transformed in some way. It can be seen even in a ­simple antiphon like “Laus trinitati”

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that she repeated par­tic­u­lar phrases and contours within her ­music to bind together par­tic­u­lar words and themes in the text and set them in parallel. She composed ­music that advances relationships between text and ­music that could deepen over time in the memory as the chant would have been repeated in the liturgy, season to season and year to year. Especially impor­tant in this poem, for example, is the ­triple repetition of the word “life,” for all life is created by a trinitarian force and embodies that force. The antiphon makes that point, especially in the singing (Example 4.1). The En­glish text is parsed according to the organ­ization found in Example 4.1.

Ex. 4.1. Antiphon: “Laus trinitati.” D, fol. 157r.



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To the Trinity be praise! It is sound and life and creator of all beings    in their life. It is the praise of the angelic host     and the wondrous splendor of mysteries    unknown to humankind: It is the life in all.16 Although “Laus trinitati” is a short and succinct piece, found within it are many of the princi­ples that guide Hildegard’s work as a composer, even when the m ­ usic becomes exceedingly complex. The first line of the chant lays out the musical material that w ­ ill be restated and expanded upon throughout the piece (labeled h ­ ere as phrases 1 + 2). The final of the piece is the pitch e, and the work employs the higher of the two scales that constitute the second maneria or set of paired scales based on E (the higher scale, mode 3, and the lower scale, mode 4).17 In modal theory, as it had evolved by the time Hildegard composed, the reciting tone for mode 3 had become the pitch c, a sixth above the final, this to avoid resting upon b and avoiding its tritonic clashes with F. As can be seen ­here, Hildegard did not do this; rather, phrase 1 of the first line has a strong emphasis on bb, the fifth above the final, with cadences on “trinitati” and on “sonus.” It is a major characteristic of Hildegard’s melodies to place g­ reat emphasis on the final, fifth, and octave within any given chant, as can be seen h ­ ere: e, bb, and ee.18 A parallel is made in this first line between the descent from ee to an ornamented bb on “trinitati,” and cc to e on the word “uita.” As can be seen, all but one of the phrases modeled on opening statement 1 cadence on the pitch b. And all the no. 2 phrases cadence on e, with one exception, 2″, which dips down and rests on d, the text meaning “unknown to humankind,” a difference in sense paralleled in the musical cadences that rest on a pitch below the expected final of e. The melismatic descents reach a climax in the setting of the third repeat of the word “vita,” mentioned above in the discussion of the poem. ­Here the two cascading passages outline the scale from upper d to lower d, and pull strongly away from e, just before the work arrives at its final cadence, which should have been an ornamented e. This melisma on the final setting of “vita,” extraordinary in this par­tic­u­lar piece, parallels the setting for the text “vita ac creatrix omnium” at the opening of the poem, thus making the point through resetting the text that the Trinity, within the life it makes, is the “creatrix omnium,” the creator of all life, h ­ ere gendered female. ­Because of the situation with the notation in the manuscript, the final pitch is sometimes transcribed as a g, but this makes no sense. I believe that very small final

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neume indicates a pitch to follow; it is drawn like a miniature oriscus (an ornamenting note) and is a sign used elsewhere in the Dendermonde codex to indicate the next pitch. In the case of “Laus trinitati” it prob­ably indicates the g that would be the opening pitch of the commonly used psalm tone for mode 3. In my transcription, I ignore it and use e as the final pitch, as do most other transcribers of this piece. The poetry and Hildegard’s ways of using m ­ usic to underscore meanings in the texts are a counterpart to the painting illustrating Scivias II.ii and to Hildegard’s theological explanations of the Trinity as the creative force of the universe. In this lyric the praise of the choirs of angels, created on day 1 in Genesis, is evoked by the melismatic descent found in phrases 1 and 2, which then repeats creating descending musical parallels on the word “vita” in each iteration, giving the word prominence, and the w ­ hole a trinitarian cast, with the most elaborate setting on the third statement of the word “vita.”19 One of the conceits Hildegard developed in Scivias II.ii on the Trinity relates to her ideas of m ­ usic and Trinitarian action as expressed in the chant texts cited ­here. As ­were many medieval scholars, Hildegard was fascinated by the qualities of sound, as well as the three components that make speech (and also m ­ usic) pos­si­ble. Her treatment of the subject is original b ­ ecause of the ways she makes this study part of a Trinitarian mode of production: “In a word ­there is sound, force and breath. It has sound that it may be heard, meaning that it may be understood, and breath that it may be pronounced. In the sound, then observe the ­Father, Who manifests all ­things with ineffable power; in the meaning, the Son, Who was miraculously begotten of the F ­ ather; and in the breath, Who sweetly burns in Them. But where no sound is heard, no meaning is used and no breath is lifted, ­there no word ­will be understood; so also the ­Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not divided from one another but do Their works together.”20 The idea, discussed above, that the Trinitarian sounds of the tones are what lay once in the womb of the Virgin Mary is directly related to this hermeneutic of ­music, and to a repertory that is trinitarian in its fabric, but which contains the essence of the fabricating power of the second person. Hildegard’s Scivias, along with the lyr­ics and dramatic works associated with it, is informed by her prophetic gifts, created and sustained by the Living Light.

The Roundels of Creation Hildegard describes the creative force of God’s Word as agent in Scivias II.i, in one of her most brilliantly dramatic and action-­fi lled visions. This description, worthy of quoting at length, relates also to the comparison of the Trinity to fire found in



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the second vision (Scivias II.ii). The flame within, inseparable from other aspects of the fire, is blue, the color of the sky, like the sapphire of Christ in the image of the Trinity from Scivias II.ii. ­Here the Trinity is the life force, as in the antiphon “Laus trinitati” quoted above, but from it a flame shoots out and functions like a master-­craftsman, the creator God, the second person of the Trinity: “And I, a person not glowing with the strength of strong lions or taught by their inspiration, but a tender and fragile rib imbued with a mystical breath, saw a blazing fire, incomprehensible, inextinguishable, wholly living and wholly Life, with a flame in it the color of the sky, which burned ardently with a gentle breath, and which was as inseparably within the blazing fire as the viscera are within a ­human being. And I saw that flame sparked and blazed up. And behold! The atmosphere suddenly ­rose up in a dark sphere of ­great magnitude, and that flame hovered over it and gave it one blow ­after another, which struck sparks from it, ­until that atmosphere was perfected and so Heaven and earth stood fully formed and resplendent.”21 In her commentary on this vision, Hildegard said that the striking blue flame is the supernal Word who beat out creation like a smith hitting metal on an anvil. With ­every stroke, the creation became more perfect, stage by stage, in a hierarchical order: “For the Supernal Word, Who excels ­every creature, showed that they all are subject to Him and draw their strength from His power, when He brought forth from the universe the dif­fer­ent kinds of creatures, shining in their miraculous awakening, as a smith makes forms out of bronze; ­until each creature was radiant with the loveliness of perfection, beautiful in the fullness of their arrangement in higher and lower ranks, the higher made radiant by the lower and the lower by the higher.”22 This description of the creation of the universe is supported by one of the most complex and masterful of the images in Scivias (see Plate VII). As can be seen, the Trinity, resembling ­here Hildegard’s wheel, hovers above the roundels depicting the hexameron, the six stages of creation from Genesis 1. A long silver prong descends from the trinitarian wheel and is thrust within the dark m ­ atter from which the stages of creation ­were formed. This is the inchoate ­matter that Hildegard described as “the material of Creation . . . ​formless and imperfect, not yet full of creatures” (instrumentum rerum in obscuritate imperfectionis scilicet nondum illustratum plenitudine creaturarum).23 It is depicted as tightly or­ga­nized in its thread-­like r­ ipples within the slender silver circle enframing the roundels, whereas the threads within the dark band on e­ ither side are chaotic by comparison.

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Roundels or medallions are used frequently in medieval art in the twelfth c­ entury to show the “days” of the hexameron, providing win­dows of sorts onto actions that could never be observed by ­humans, which may have taken place in another realm of time, and yet do have need of being represented for comprehension. Aliza Cohen-­Mushlin thinks the tradition was represented first in Flanders in the late eleventh c­ entury, and cites Tournai, Bibliothèque du Séminaire, MS 1, a Bible from Lobbes.24 The Worms-­Frankenthal Bible (London, British Library, Harley MS 2803), which dates from 1148, contains a Genesis initial with two medallions, capable of standing in for all in a tradition that has become established by the mid-­twelfth c­ entury (fol. 6v).25 At the top is the first day of creation and the making of light, and at the bottom the last day of creation, with Eve rising from the body of a sleeping Adam.26 Several scholars have collected and compared the medallions of creation from the twelfth ­century, and study of ­these demonstrates that Hildegard’s painting is in the tradition, and yet very dif­fer­ent from it, especially b ­ ecause of the context she has created for the roundels.27 Hildegard’s roundels, one day each from Genesis 1, line up so they are read from left to right three times, but then at the bottom of the set is a new kind of roundel, flaming red, without a background, and with a ­human head emerging. This half roundel extends Day 6 to give the creation of humankind, rising from a mound of fiery mud, its own scene. Day 1: Heaven, Earth, Light and Darkness Day 2: Firmament; Division of W ­ aters Day 3: Land, Seas, Green plants Day 4: Sun, Moon, Stars Day 5: Creeping t­ hings, Fowls, and Fishes Day 6: Beasts and Humankind ­ ere are many twelfth-­century sets of roundels to compare with Hildegard’s disTh play, and several of them are set into a larger context, exploration of which helps us to understand the distinctiveness of her thinking and its repre­sen­ta­tion. It is typical to include the Log­os as creator in displays of roundels, but the creative force of the silver prong and its descent into primal ­matter seems to be unique to Hildegard. The days of creation painting from the Stammheim Missal, made for Saint Michael Abbey in Hildesheim around 1170 (Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS 63), offers a dif­fer­ent solution to Day 6, with a desire to give the creation of ­human beings prominence. The artist created a channel through which Adam’s



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feet protrude, thus linking him and Eve to the beasts, also created in Day 6. This allows the ­humans pride of place in the act of creation, without suggesting that ­t here ­were more than six days of creation. The Gospels of Henry the Lion (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 105 Noviss. 2°), dated to 1175–88, contains a solution somewhat similar to that of Hildegard for Day 6 (see fol. 172r).28 Christus is seated in the midst of this creation scene in front of a cosmological backdrop, his hand blessing, and holding a book containing a phrase from Isaiah 45:7: “Ego Dominus faciens omnia hec” (I the Lord making all ­t hese ­t hings). The six roundels of creation surround him, positioned strategically so the creation of light, with an angel, is at the top (Day 1) and the creation of the beasts and h ­ umans (Day 6) occupies the bottom. The roundel for Day 6 has been divided with the beasts occupying half and Adam rising from a half circle, a similar situation to what is found in the Hildegard painting. Hildegard’s six days of creation are set into a complicated display that depicts other events in the history of the cosmos with the earth at its center (Plate VII and Figure 4.2).29 On the upper right, Adam appears, in contact with a lily that represents the pure life he originally had. In a reversal that foreshadows the Annunciation and the lily often seen within depictions of it, Adam deliberately turns away from the choice of this symbolic flower and slides into disobedient sin, where his tormented body can be seen glowing red in the chaos of the original m ­ atter from which he was created. Within this darkened band are many other lights, and Hildegard explains that t­hese represent all the c­ hildren of Adam, trapped like him in eternal darkness. She says that ­there is hope of redemption, and ­those who believe in it glow with special light. Accordingly, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the three largest stars, gleaming in Trinitarian splendor, to the viewer’s left; in the upper right is a single very large star, and this is John the Baptist, the last of the prophets and the herald of the Anointed. All t­hese bright stars w ­ ere trapped in darkness from the time before the salvific actions of the Cross; they w ­ ill be redeemed at the Harrowing of Hell. Below this, Christ, as a ­human figure, emerges from the edge of a Trinitarian sphere and spreads golden rays into the darkened band of the damned. Hildegard makes the point, both through this visual display and in her words, that Christ is not separated from the Trinitarian Godhead when he appears in the flesh on earth: “God set a ­great splendor of light in the place where He would bring forth His Word and, fully willing it, sent Him ­t here, yet not so as to be divided from Him; but He gave that profitable fruit and brought Him forth as a ­great fountain.”30 The rays engulfing and shooting from this serene man who is

Fig. 4.2. Creation and Redemption. Scivias II.i, from W, fol. 41v.



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Christ touch Adam and initiate his redemption, a reversal of the fallen state. This burst of light, constantly referenced in Hildegard’s writings and especially in her chant texts, is the Incarnation, the new creation, made pos­si­ble through the coming of Christ. It is a cosmic force, functioning like a mighty dawn, the hour of the day to which the Virgin Mary is so often compared in Hildegard’s thought world, placing this new creation in parallel with that of the hexameron described in Genesis 1.

The New Creation Expressed in Poetry and M ­ usic This light-­fi lled re-­creation and its parallel to the original as depicted in Plate VII (Scivias II.i) is expressed in the antiphon “O splendidissima gemma,” the first of the fourteen Scivias chant texts incorporated in the end of the treatise.31 That this is the first piece Hildegard has chosen gives it pride of place in her collection of chants, and study of its texts and ­music demonstrates why it was so highly favored. The material from which the original “days” w ­ ere created has been replaced in this second creation by the body of the virgin, the “light-­fi lled m ­ atter,” which exists in contrast to the chaotic original m ­ atter tamed by the actions d ­ escribed in Genesis. The meaning of light h ­ ere relates as well to Hildegard’s understanding of darkness and the fall of Satan and his angels, discussed further below. Hildegard’s careful planning for the treatise and the relationship of this chant to the ­whole rest on the fact that the chant parallels the openings of Scivias Books I and III, and so provides a lyrical miniature, a statement of the meanings of the entirety. The text concerns the old and new creations, as do Scivias Books I and III at their beginnings: “The Word, as the second person of the Trinity, created the first material. H ­ umans threw it into confusion, engendering the strife that is found in Hildegard’s depiction of the Cosmic Egg in Scivias I.iii. The first m ­ atter was the primal stuff of all creation. But the second ­matter, made pos­si­ble by and through the body of the Virgin and her h ­ umble spirit, engenders the new strong virtues, ideas not fully expressed for the h ­ uman intellect u ­ ntil a­ fter this re-­ creation through Christ.”32 Example 4.3 shows how Hildegard used her musical setting to make several paired versicles, underscoring themes of re-­creation and newness in Mary through Christ, who leaps from the heart of the ­Father. When Hildegard’s community sang this m ­ usic, or heard it sung by their peers with the gift for ­music, they ­were ingrafted within the central meanings of Hildegard’s art and theology.

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O splendidissima gemma Musical sections of the chant no. 1 O most splendid jewel no. 2.1 and 2.2 and clear beauty of the sun, that fills you,

Comments Ornamented e; descent to a; ornamented e Undulating use of “a” phrase (see phrase 2.1); in this way the m ­ usic is “infused”; stretch upward on solis (of the sun)

no. 3.1 and 3.2 a fountain leaping Leap upwards on saliens (“leaping”), from the heart of the ­Father, and then a long ornamented descent who is his only Word, both on saliens and on quod creavit through which He created mundi; the “first material” and “Eve the first m ­ atter of the world, confused” are set to nearly the same which Eve confused; ­music no. 4 for you the ­Father fashioned this Word “Word,” “­father,” and “­human” are as a h ­ uman being musically in parallel and by this action you are the light-­ filled ­matter no. 5 phrases through which this Word breathes More than any other of the couplets, out all virtues, the m ­ usic h ­ ere is nearly identical in just as he brought forth all creatures each statement from the primal m ­ atter.33 The text of “O splendidissima gemma” as divided by the musical setting: O splendidissima gemma (with reiterative ele­ments) 1 et serenum decus solis 2.1 qui tibi infusus est 2.2 fons saliens de corde patris qui est unicum 3.1 verbum suum per quod creauit mundi primum materiam 3.2   quam eua turbauit hoc uerbum effabricauit tibi pater 4.1 hominem et ob hoc es tu illa lucida [materia would finish the line] 4.2 materia per quam hoc ipsum uerbum expirauit omnes 5.1 uirtutes et eduxit in prima materia omnes creaturas. 5.2



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In the liner notes to his fine recording of Hildegard’s Ursula chants, conductor Marcel Pérès describes what it is like to sing Hildegard’s m ­ usic: “Hildegard’s m ­ usic . . . ​ often takes the form of a slow and solemn declamation destined to permit the listener to absorb each word and to plant in his [/her] mind the burgeoning image which, as it comes to life, may be contemplated.”34 This way of working is very well illustrated in “O splendidissima,” and even just in the first paired couplet. As can be seen in Example 4.2, ­t here are five phrases, marked “a,” that repeat. This phrase is made up of two parts, an arch that moves from d to d with g as its high point, and a leap up a fifth to a with a descent to an ornamented e. In some cases half of the a phrase is used, for example, at the ends of 2.1 and 2.2. As the text describes the beautiful jewel (Mary) that is filled by the sun, the ­music repeats multiple times, filling the poetry with its “rays.” The entire chant unfolds in a series of musical couplets, a loosely engendered way of proceeding that is typical of Hildegard’s compositional practice, used in a more complex way ­here than was seen in “Laus trinitati.” In this Marian antiphon, Hildegard arranged phrases of the text in loosely parallel couplets, a­ fter the initial singleton. But t­ here is also a variety of displacements that create cross-­relationships at vari­ous junctures. The smaller cells of ­music, with phrase “a” described above as the best example, are repeated and rearranged, allowing for emphases on par­ tic­u­lar words, sometimes by stretching out a given word, and other times by reuse of musical phrases to place words in parallels. Hildegard’s musical settings provide ways of making new kinds of emphases between the carefully meted-­out images constituting her poetry, slowly building the ideas within the singer’s (or listener’s) imagination. Hildegard’s chants are all firmly situated in the ecclesiastical modes, primarily (although far from exclusively) ­those modes that have finals of E and D. However, as indicated above, her ranges are inclusive of both the higher and lower parts of ­these modes, combining both the so-­ called “au­then­tic” (higher) and plagal (lower) pitches of any of the four maneria; I discussed e­ arlier her practice of emphasizing the unison, fourth, fifth, and octave. “O spendidissima gemma,” for example, is set in E: Hildegard uses the fifth below e down to a, and the fourth above e, aa, giving an octave that is explored repeatedly, especially when adding the fifth above aa, ee. But by contrast, she also explores a complimentary range of pitches from b up to e, e to bb, and bb to ee, another set of

Ex. 4.2. Phrase a from “O splendidissima gemma.” D, fol. 154r–­v.

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fourths, fifths, and octaves (Example 4.3).35 In several of her other chants, Hildegard goes beyond this extended range and adds yet another related group of pitches.36 Many phrases are constructed by the juxtaposition of ornamented members of ­t hese pitches and the fourths and fifths found in ­t hese scalar patterns. For example, the first phrase of “O splendidissima” (phrase 1) is r­ eally made from an ornamented e, the ornamented a below it, and the return to an ornamented e. The power of Hildegard’s ­music relies on her constant uses of varied ways of ornamenting key pitches, the finals, fourths, and fifths of the scales she is employing, and rarely losing focus, no m ­ atter how elaborate her ornaments might be. By her fixation upon t­hese key pitches, Hildegard’s m ­ usic is well centered tonally and possesses a power­ful rhetorical sense, one that allows both for proclamation of textual phrases and for using repetition and transposition to unite and amplify thematic relationships in the poetry. It also means that her m ­ usic, although rhetorically complex, is fairly easy to learn, to remember, and to sing. It is deeply wedded to her texts and so helps to remember them as well, and to understand them. When composing in the E modes, however, Hildegard often creates phrases that are briefly in D, although their final cadences return to E. Alternation between the modal realms of E and D is characteristic of many of her chants; they are the basic polarities she established in the sung play Ordo virtutum (see Chapters 7 and 8).37 Something of this strategy can be seen in the phrases marked “a” that repeat throughout the second couplet. The first half of the phrase moves from d up to g and emphasizes d; the second half of the phrase moves from d to aa, the fifth above d, but then cadences on e, reestablishing this pitch. Hildegard’s many musical gestures relate to the text and divide words and phrases to create vari­ous sorts of emphases. The phrase “O splendidissima gemma” (phrase 1) is set off by itself to create the brilliant character of the gem, but in a lower range from what follows. The higher range explored in couplets 2.1 and 2.2 offers an ornamented view of the light of the Sun, which, we learn, has filled the gem. Th ­ ese opening lines of the poem and their musical settings proclaim the mystical relationship between God and the creative agent, the Word, between Mary and her Son, and between the Sun and the Moon. Couplet 3 represents a shift in subject in the poetry, from the Son as Sun to the Son as a fountain that flows from the heart of God the F ­ ather. In the second half of the couplet (3.2), Hildegard expanded the musical phrase so that the words “which Eve confused” are in parallel with a statement about material, and so in the singing of the text, Eve once again destroys the nature of the ordered world. In the phrases of couplet 4, the action of restoration begins as the Word creates a ­human person from the light-­filled flesh that is the Virgin Mary. Hildegard moves the word “materia” that completes the phrase of the poem down to a new musical couplet (5.1),

Ex. 4.3. Antiphon: “O splendidissima gemma.” D, fol. 154r–­v.

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giving it a relationship to the last part of the text through the musical setting. In the first material the Word created all creatures; but in the second material, Mary, the Word breathes forth the virtues, the ideas that ­will allow for the transformation of the fallen world. In the settings of the phrases in couplet 5, it can be seen that the parallels between the two acts of creation are strengthened. Singing carefully repeated phrases in this way is quite dif­fer­ent from reading them, as the words sung and sustained by the notes might move in and out of the singers’ imaginations, creating thoughts that vary according to the training and inclinations of each worshipper. The potent material is provided by Hildegard in her work as poet-­composer, and the framework for the thought is found in Scivias. In this pithy summary of the entire treatise, the virtues are both Mariological and Christological, powerfully engendered and made strong within the Incarnational moment of a new creation. The imagistic understanding that Hildegard has constructed through her treatise, her lyr­ics, her ­music, and the accompanying artworks provides a sense of how the media in which she worked ­were meant to inform the imaginations of ­women in her community and provide their vari­ous strug­gles and lives with cosmic dimensions. Hildegard’s chant texts are nearly always proclamations of awestruck praise, as ­here in “O splendidissima.” The text is about the new creation and the old; the “first m ­ atter” was s­ haped by the Word, the second person of the Trinity. The second Creation is also through the Word, incarnate in the material of the Virgin’s flesh. This “light-­fi lled m ­ atter” breathes out virtues, the ideas of goodness that parallel the creatures seen in the roundels of creation. Linking the two creations are the twin Falls, of Satan and then of Adam and Eve, and ­t hese actions are the most impor­tant in Hildegard’s view of creation and cosmos. In fact, it is t­ hese two roundels, Day 1 and Day 6, that she chose to emphasize; they provide two parallel points for understanding creation and re-­creation as explored in Hildegard’s theology, art, m ­ usic, and liturgical poetry.

Day 1: The Creation of Light Hildegard’s portrait studied above (Chapter 3) and its commentary w ­ ere designed to resonate with her understanding of the creation of humankind and the visionary experiences attributed to Adam, the legendary first ­human. Crucial is her relationship to the light and its role in the first “day” of creation and the understandings generally held about the nature of God’s making of the universe. Adam himself is defined by his relationship to the warming force that created him: he was originally radiant, but ­after he fell, this luster faded. The first stage of creation, in Genesis



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1:1–5, plants the seeds of Hildegard’s understanding and the connection between light and the beginning of the cosmos: “In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the ­waters. And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and ­t here was eve­ning and morning one day.”38 God’s creation of light in the first “day” leads to questions: What was ­there before? From what substance ­were the new creations made? As has been argued in Chapter 1, t­ hese questions have occupied cosmologists for centuries, from the ancient Greeks to the pre­sent time, including con­temporary disagreements about the “big bang.” Dominique Poirel has laid out two poles of difference regarding the nature of chaos before the formation of the universe as formulated in the de­ cades just before and while Hildegard was writing Scivias: (1) The phi­los­o­pher William of Conches did not think that anything God did could possibly be formless or imperfect; (2) Hildegard’s older con­temporary the theologian Hugh of St.-­ Victor argued a dif­fer­ent point of view, one based on his study of scripture and his belief in the importance of time and history: that God created the universe in the way it happened, in stages and over time, so that h ­ umans could learn from it, about God, and about themselves.39 According to Hugh: “For the omnipotent God, whose ­will can never be separated from His goodness, just as he made all other t­ hings on account of the rational creature [i.e., humankind], so also in making all ­t hese He must especially have observed that mode which was more suited to the benefit and interest of the rational creature itself.” 40 Hildegard’s understanding is close to that of Hugh in many ways, for, in her interpretations, the ­matter from which the universe was created was formless, imperfect, and made by God as such, out of nothing. She said in Scivias II.16: “the material of Creation while still formless and imperfect, not yet full of creatures . . . ​ is a sphere,” and even in this state, it is filled with God’s power and rises up “in the twinkling of an eye.” Hildegard explained ­t hese ­t hings further at the very opening of Cause et cure, a treatise that frequently exists in harmony with Scivias. Her description provides theological context for Genesis 1:1–5 as she interpreted it in Scivias as well: “The Creation of the World: God was and is without beginning before the Creation of the world. He was and is the brilliant light, and he was Life. When God wanted to create the world, he made it out of nothing: the m ­ atter of the world existed in his ­Will alone. ­Matter. Then as God’s ­will to bring the work to completion revealed itself, m ­ atter, as a dark yet unformed clod, sprang immediately out of his ­Will, as God intended. The Creation of the Angels. And the Word of

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the ­Father boomed through the heavens: ‘Let ­t here be light!’ Light came into being and with it the light-­bearing angels” (Cause et cure, I).41 Creating through the Word, the second person of the Trinity, God commanded that light be drawn out from this dark unformed ­matter. This initial act also created the angels (who accordingly are pure light) at the command “fiat lux!” In Scivias I.ii, Hildegard began to lay out her complex angelology with her view of “a very ­great multitude of very bright living lamps, which received fiery brilliance and acquired an unclouded splendor.” 42 She explained that ­these angels “burn with worthy love through affection for Him, from the glory of heavenly beatitude.” 43 The angels are defined not only by their beauty but also by their obedience: “when they ­were created by God they did not grasp at proud exaltation but strongly persisted in divine love.” 44 The ways in which they are defined by song give purpose to the act of singing: for at the very moment Satan and his band fell, the obedient angels burst into song: “At the fall of the Devil ­great praise burst forth from ­these angelic spirits who persevered in rectitude with God.” 45 This sense of singing becomes part of ­human work in the journey ­toward redemption, an idea Hildegard proclaims in the antiphon text “O gloriosissimi” discussed below.46 Hildegard’s chants can be placed in the framework of both Adam’s original m ­ usic and the eternal songs of the angelic hosts.

The Separation of Light and Dark Lucifer, met initially near the very beginning of Scivias, comes to life as a character in Hildegard’s skillful hands. He was splendid to begin with, “so g­ reat at the moment of his creation that he felt no defect e­ ither in his beauty or in his strength.” Lucifer, like the ­humans who would eventually follow ­after him, “discovered pride.” This made him wish to have his own place in the universe, one that would be equal to if not superior to that of God, saying “I wish to shine t­ here as he does h ­ ere” (Volo 47 fulgere illic quemadmodum et iste hic). And this wish caused a sudden and swift fall from the ranks of the angels and the sphere of light, and t­ hose who consented to his wishes left as well: “And when, elated with pride, he tried to achieve what he had conceived, the jealousy of the Lord, reaching out in fiery blackness, cast him down with all his retinue, so that they w ­ ere made burning instead of shining and black instead of fair.” 48 Hildegard’s theology at this point in her treatise is rooted generally in the thought of Anselm of Canterbury and Gregory the ­Great, although the emphasis on song is her own. In his work on the Fall, Anselm argues for the f­ree w ­ ill of all angels, who chose between the good path of fidelity and the evil road of pride, and who followed



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a­ fter Lucifer or did not. In addition, once the evil angels fell, they could never be redeemed, nor could the good angels that remained with God do evil in the f­uture, thus creating a kind of duality in the world of living spirits that is pre­sent in Hildegard’s exegesis and lyrical poetry as well. The remaining angels rejoice in praise of God, but they do not rejoice b ­ ecause of the actions of their evil counter­parts. The fallen angels are condemned as a result of divine justice, and their actions earn eternal damnation: “Therefore, just as the evil angel deserves to be blamed b ­ ecause he is unable to return to justice, so the good angel deserves to be praised ­because he is unable to depart from justice. For just as the former is not unable to return b ­ ecause he departed solely by an evil ­will, so the latter is now unable to depart ­because he remained steadfast solely by a good ­will. Therefore, it is evident that just as it is the penalty of sin for the evil angel to be unable to recover what he deserted, so it is the reward of justice for the good angel to be unable to desert what he has kept.” 49 Gregory the G ­ reat, following Augustine, argued that h ­ umans w ­ ere created to 50 replace a fallen rank of angels. Gregory is further concerned with the number of angels that remain in heaven a­ fter Satan’s fall, stating that this number is equal to the number of the elect that ­will be added to their ranks: “The heavenly city is made up of angels and ­human beings; we believe that as many of the ­human race ascend to ­there, as ­there ­were chosen angels who happened to remain ­there.”51 Honorius Augustodunensis, who thought that the ranks w ­ ere designed originally with a h ­ uman intention already in place, differs in his views on this m ­ atter from Gregory. Honorius says: “And thus man has his proper place in the universe, just as angels have their place. Therefore, man was not created for angels but for himself, other­wise the worm, who has his place, would have greater dignity than man, who would lack his own place and occupy the place of another and in this way dissonance would occur in the universe. But God would also be careless to place something in the place of another. And b ­ ecause this is against the truth, true reason demonstrates: if all the angels had remained in heaven, man would fully have had his proper place in heaven.”52 Hildegard also describes the way that h ­ uman beings ­were created to take their places in the cosmos near the beginning of Scivias III (III.ii). The “Living Light” explains that lights ­were created in the heavens, but some in the angelic array grew proud and fell. At that point: “God foresaw that what had fallen in this lost group could be more firmly restored in another. How? He created humankind from the mud of the earth, living in soul and body, to attain to that glory from which the apostate Devil and his followers ­were cast out . . . ​and thus in the height of blessedness humankind was to augment the praise of the heavenly spirits who praise God with assiduous devotion, and so fill up the place left empty by the lost angel who fell in his presumption.”53

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Honorius also tried to argue for the fallen angels having a role to play in the workings of the entire cosmos, a more holistic view than that held by Gregory, Anselm, and Hildegard. As, in her view, evil angels cannot be redeemed, Hildegard’s treatise develops her emphasis on the differences between fallen angels and fallen ­humans, who ­will have the possibility of salvation. The image associated with Scivias II.i (Figure 4.2), the upper-­right quadrant of which depicts the Fall, has its counter­parts in both Scivias I.ii (Figure 4.3) and in Scivias III.1. All three work together to offer a composite understanding of Day 1 in Hildegard’s hexameron. In fact, the opening chapters of each book of Scivias are about the Fall, in one way or another. In this vibrantly dramatic painting associated with Scivias I.ii, Satan comes in the form of a thumblike protrusion on a hand of dark chaotic ­matter that is part of Hell. The thumb turns into a serpent’s head that spews fiery venom onto the green cloud of stars that represents Eve, connected to Adam’s side and filled with the stars of her offspring, and the nearby Adam, who is plunging headlong out of a verdant Paradise and into a hell’s mouth, taking with him all of humankind, pre­ sent and ­f uture.54 The band above separates the zone of the earth from the starry ether. In the corners of the painting are the four ele­ments, t­ hose associated with the heavens, air and fire, in the upper corners, and in the lower, ­water and earth, the ele­ments of humankind and the earthly realm. It is at the moment of Adam’s fall from a golden zone that the cosmos is transformed, for the earth is at its center. What had been serene and without motion comes into violent motion, for the timelessness of eternity has changed and mutability enters. The “stars” that the fallen Adam takes with him into the pit make a parallel with the angels as described in Scivias I.ii, the multitude of living lamps, who ­were created on Day 1. At this moment, the planets begin to move and time is created: And behold! A pit of g­ reat breadth and depth appeared, with a mouth like the mouth of a well, emitting fiery smoke with a ­great stench, from which a loathsome cloud spread out and touched a deceitful, vein-­shaped form. And, in a region of brightness, it blew upon a white cloud that had come forth from a beautiful ­human form and contained within itself many and many stars, and in so ­doing, cast out both the white cloud and the ­human form from that region. When this was done, a luminous splendor surrounded that region, and all the ele­ments of the world, which before had existed in ­great calm, ­were turned to the greatest agitation and displayed horrible terrors. And again I heard Him Who had spoken to me before saying.55

Fig. 4.3. The Fall. Scivias I.ii, from W, fol. 4r.

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The image at the beginning of Scivias Book III complements t­ hose from Scivias I.ii and II (see Plate VIII). It depicts the fall of Satan and his minions in cosmographical terms, and is revelatory as well of the relationship between angels and h ­ uman beings. Although each depiction of the Fall presented in the treatise is dif­fer­ent, each is part of a larger w ­ hole.56 Hildegard says of the strikingly unique image at Scivias III.i: And then I saw a g­ reat star, splendid and beautiful, come forth from the One seated on the throne. And with that star came a ­great multitude of shining sparks, which followed the star t­oward the South, looking on the One seated on the throne like a stranger; they turned away from Him and stared t­ oward the North instead of contemplating Him. But in the very act of turning away their gaze, they ­were all extinguished and ­were turned into black cinders. And behold, a whirlwind arose from t­hese cinders, which drove them away from the South, ­behind the One sitting on the Throne, and carried them to the North, where they ­were precipitated into the abyss and vanished from my sight. But when they w ­ ere extinguished, I saw the light, which was taken from them, immediately return to Him Who sat on the throne.57 As can be seen in Plate VIII, the light from the fallen angels, with the most beautiful Lucifer as their leader, is being sucked out of t­hese darkened stars by the golden godhead to the far right. None of the light ­w ill be wasted. Instead, Hildegard explained, God the ­Father kept it in his “secret heart,” so it would become “a light for another of His creations.” It is clear that she believed in the idea, inherited from her intellectual mentor Gregory the ­Great, that ­human beings ­were created ­later on in the schemata of the hexameron to regain the light lost at the Fall of Satan.58

The Fall of Satan and His Minions in Lyrical Display Among the fourteen chant texts found at the end of Scivias is Hildegard’s magnificent antiphon for the angels, “O gloriosissimi,” the first in a pair of two works in cele­bration of the angels.59 ­Because the text is included as part of the treatise itself, its close relationship to the ideas concerning the first day of creation, the angelic hosts, the Fall of Satan, and the place made for a new kind of creature relates powerfully and directly to Hildegard’s theological statements about angels



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and the Fall of Satan in Scivias, as well as to the paintings of the Fall described above. The lyric falls into two sections, the first of which offers an occasion for the chanting community to praise the angelic song of the hosts who remained faithful and did not join the departure of Satan (Lucifer); the second half compares the “glorious joys” of the true angels to the perversity of ­those who fell, setting up through both text and ­music the graphic nature of the Fall of Satan, which transformed the cosmos and thereby created a spot for the new creatures made on Day 6.60 The poem is a pithy summary of views of creation, Day 1, and the Falls of Satan and of Adam as expressed in Scivias, and allows Hildegard’s community to join their voices in praise of the angels who chose the light, to experience sonically a fall with Satan, and to come to a sense of hopeful recovery at the very end. H ­ ere Hildegard’s ideas are transformed into a lyric, which is, in its turn, carved into phrases through the musical setting and expressed with a graphic and palpable sense of joy, sorrow, and a ­f uture filled with possibility. The m ­ usic offers greater layers of complexity than t­hose explored above in “Laus trinitati”(Example 4.1) and “O splendidissima” (Example 4.3). The ways of working explored in the simpler pieces remain in operation, but they are expanded upon ­here. Performing a large-­scale chant by Hildegard can take the singer on a narrative journey, as she seizes upon ­every word and phrase, working with several strategies to create a variety of emphases in meaning. As has been discussed already, she works with modified “couplet” structure in a ­great number of her compositions, but as ­here, ­t hese sometimes grow to three, four, and even five repetitions of similar melodic contours with groups of similar pitches. She also makes melodic phrases that circle around foundational pitches and ornament them, capitalizing on the alternating chains of thirds contrasts, which provide strong areas of tension and release in the ­music (Example 4.5). En­glish and Latin Texts for Example 4.4 Part 1 O most glorious angels, living light: beneath the Divinity you gaze on the eyes of God with the mystical darkness of all creation in ardent desires, so you can never be satiated.

Ex. 4.4. Antiphon: “O gloriosissimi.” D, fol. 159r.

Part 2 O how glorious are ­t hose joys that belong to your form, which in you is untouched by all the wicked work that first arose in your companion, the lost angel, who wished to fly above the pinnacle hidden in the depths of God. So he crookedly plunged into ruin— but by his counsel, he supplied the means of his fall to the handi­work of God’s fin­ger.61

Ex. 4.4. continued

Ex. 4.4. continued

Ex. 4.5. Chains of thirds employed in “O gloriosissimi”; e final, with the octave e-­b-ee as major pitches and resting points in the musical rhe­toric.



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Latin Text, as parsed by divisions within the musical setting (Ex. 4.4) Part 1

phrases

O gloriosissimi lux uiuens angeli qui infra diuinitatem diuinos oculos cum mystica obscuritate omnis creature aspicitis in ardentibus desideriis unde numquam

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 4 combination of m ­ usic from ­earlier phrases [a musical return] potestis 1′ saciari 1′ Part 2 O quam gloriosa gaudia illa uestra (5.1) habet forma que in uobis est (5.2) intacta ab omni pravo opere (6.1) quod primum ortum est (6.2) in uestro socio (6.3) perdito angelo (6.4 “angelo” has almost the same ­music as for “primum”) qui uolare uoluit supra intus latens (7.1) pinnaculum dei unde ipse (7.2) tortuosus demersus est in ruinam (7.3) sed ipsius instrumenta casus (7.2, first half) consiliando facture (7.2, first half) digiti dei instituit (Makes a return Part 1, 2.1 and 3.1) In the opening of the piece, the phrase describing the glorious living light of the angels breaks in half and so the musical restatement binds the phrases into one sense (1.1 and 1.2). The rest of Part 1 is dramatic, but in an understated way. The first melodic phrase sets up the material that w ­ ill return two more times. A ­ fter this the phrases explore a lower part of the range with a Dionysian reference to the mysterious darkness of all creation, closing out with a return to a material in a couplet that describes the satisfaction of the faithful angels with their roles in the cosmos.

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Part 2 offers a graphic description of the Fall of Satan and the accompanying angels. The phrases set to melodic couplets 5 and 6 offer a kind of transition from the cele­bration of one group of angels to the destructive actions of another. As indicated in Example 4.4 the words “first” (primum) and “angel” (angelo) are set to the same notes, joining the wicked work of the first angel to this same creature’s demise. The long lines constituting several components of material labeled 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 are all lines of dramatic descent, graphically taking the texts on several kinds of decline. We used the plunging line 7.3 for the fall of the stars in our film of cosmos and creation for the planetarium, so as the light is sucked out of them, the singers proclaim “tortuosus demersus est in ruinam.” The final line opens the way for a new kind of angelic creature, with a return to musical material from Part 1 of the chant. To sing this chant with its graphic powers of rising and falling is a visceral experience.

The Hexameron in the Twelfth-­Century Illuminated Scivias at Salem The ways in which medieval artists depicted the ranks of angels reveal a range of stances on the relationships of the parallel Falls and the cosmic case of the First Day of Creation, as can be seen in two examples from the Morgan Library. In an early thirteenth-­century French illuminated Bible (New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS 638), Christ is pictured as the agent of creation.62 In his left hand, he holds aloft a shining orb that represents the light and in his right hand, held low, he holds a dark gray mass, the edges of which are not smooth, representing darkness. Angels in white robes stand in the upper register to his left and raise their hands in adoration. Below Christ’s feet is Satan, with demons to e­ ither side of him, plunging headlong. The division of light from darkness on Day 1 signifies the choice the angels made between disobedience and fruitless rebellion. In this example, the nature of Day 1 is revealed, but ­there is no statement about the relationship between angels, demons, and the coming of humankind. The Creation painting in Morgan Library MS 791, fol. 4v, an early thirteenth-­century illuminated En­glish Bible, makes a contrasting statement.63 The Trinitarian Godhead is surrounded by the ranks of angels. ­There are nine ranks, but it can be seen that in the upper-­left quadrant a row has been left vacant among the ranks. In other words, ­there ­were ten, and now ­there is a row to be filled. Below the quatrefoil containing the Trinity as agent of creation are four angels, plummeting with their



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heads upside down. The action is restated in the roundels of creation in the lower half of the page: on Day 1, the Log­os creates the angels, and t­ here are ten of them in total, perhaps representing their state before the Fall; the roundel just above is an addition to the normal set of six and shows the spirit hovering above the ­waters, from Genesis 1:2. The close connection between Hildegard’s treatise and the artworks in the Wiesbaden illuminated Scivias are not found in the Creation images at the opening of the twelfth-­century illuminated Scivias now in the University Library at Heidelberg (Figure 4.4).64 Rather, the artist has transformed an inherited e­ arlier tradition, revising it to incorporate an overlay of understanding taken from subject m ­ atter found in Scivias. Clearly the designer of this very dif­fer­ent depiction of creation and the Fall from that designed on the Rupertsberg realized the importance of t­ hese themes in Hildegard’s treatise and tried to incorporate them into a schema known from a drawing found in an annals, martyrology, and chapter office book from Zwiefalten, dated ca. 1162 (Figure 4.5).65 Comparison above of three depictions of the hexameron and the Fall from the illuminated Rupertsberg Scivias offers context for how yet another twelfth-­ century artist who knew Scivias worked with Hildegard’s ideas and with an inherited artistic tradition to make something new in his/her copy of the treatise. The image Hildegard inspired on the Rupertsberg associated with Scivias II.1 is a composite image, including the history of the creation, the Fall of Adam, and the redemption of humankind through the Incarnation of Christ (see Figure  4.2 and Plate VII). However, the Fall of Satan and the rebellious angels is not to be found in this image. In the Creation image found in the Heidelberg Scivias, however, they are pre­sent and in ways that relate directly to Hildegard’s understanding of the Fall of Satan and its parallel, the Fall of Adam and Eve. In the Creation drawing in the Heidelberg Scivias, modeled on the e­ arlier drawing in the Zwiefalten martyrology, Christ is in the center as the creating Log­os, surrounded by a set of six roundels. The creation of Adam and Eve has been separated out from the beasts of Day 6. Raging around the calmness of the Log­os in the center and the days of creation surrounding him is the ­battle described in Apoc. 12:7–10, and labeled as such: “7. And t­ here was a g­ reat b ­ attle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: [8] And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. [9] And that g­ reat dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the w ­ hole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels ­were thrown down with him. [10] And I heard a loud voice in

Fig. 4.4. Creation and the Fall. Frontispiece of Scivias from Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Salem X.16, fol. 2r.

Fig. 4.5. Creation and the Fall. The Zwiefalten Martyrology, Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. hist. 2o 415, fol. 17r.

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heaven, saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: ­because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night” (see Figure 4.4). In this dynamic image, ­there is a strong sense of motion, a wheel within a wheel. In the center, Christ blesses what he has created and sees that it is good. But in the circle around this calm scene, a ­battle rages, as the archangel Michael runs his spear through Lucifer at the top. Demons circle downward ­toward the towers of Hell in the right corner. The falling angels are bestial, with furry skins, and their expressions are neither angry nor defiant but rather as if duped. One or two look back dolefully, but in general they accept their apparent fates. On the other side of this circle, the archangel’s warrior angels are arrayed, swords in hand, ready to fight. The sense is that the ­battle, although won, is not over. At the bottom of the image, the other fall is displayed. In the center are the four rivers of paradise, representing the kingdom about to be lost, as Adam accepts the fruit from Eve to the right.66 To the left the c­ ouple is barred from their original home, and exits stage right, to the viewer’s left. Although the first painting accompanying the Heidelberg Scivias clearly followed its apparent model in the martyrology, essential changes have been made to align the work more closely with the themes of Hildegard’s treatise. In effect, one won­ders if the artist discussed this work with someone who may have seen the Rupertsberg illuminated Scivias, which surely would have been pos­si­ble given the close relationship between the Rupertsberg and Zwiefalten in the twelfth c­ entury. Nine ranks of angels surround the Log­os, and the chaotic threads b ­ ehind the roundel containing him and the angels are reminiscent of t­ hose found in the Rupertsberg manuscript, especially as found in the painting for Scivias II.1. Michael emerges from one of the ranks to stab Lucifer through with his spear, this differentiating the angelic array from that found in the Rupertsberg Scivias I.vi. The falling demons are of a dif­fer­ent character from ­t hose described above: they are defiant and some shake their spears in anger. Some roundels of Creation ­here resemble t­ hose found in the chronicle manuscript and the Adam and Eve are very similar. In both sets, the creation of Adam and Eve has been separated and turned into a sixth roundel. In addition, the winged Lucifer in this painting is modeled on that of the Zwiefalten martyrology rather than the painting of Lucifer found in the Rupertsberg Scivias accompanying vision II.vii. But ­t here are points of resemblance as well, especially regarding the chain that binds Lucifer in the Rupertsberg painting; the Salem Lucifer is also chained.67 The context of the roundels of creation in both the Rupertsberg Scivias II.1 and the Salem illuminated Scivias position the creation and the Creator in a cos-



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mos that is beaten out in six days, but with emphasis on both the Fall of Satan on the first Day and the creation of h ­ umans on Day 6. This cosmos is blasted by the action of the Fall of Satan, for it foreshadows the Fall of humankind, depicted very differently in the images. In the Rupertsberg Scivias, the fallen Adam plunges headlong into two dif­fer­ent Hells. In both works of art, the creation and its perfection at the start have been transformed into a cosmic battleground between the forces of good and evil, with ­human beings and their actions at the center of the fray. At the heart of creation and the days of Genesis is ­human choice, and ­t hose choices are of cosmic importance. For Hildegard, the bad choices made by Satan, and by Eve, both of which rattled the instrument, would be undone by the choice of the Virgin at the Incarnation, a universe-­transforming event.

CHAPTER 5

The Cosmic Egg and the Liturgy

In the Shape of an Egg In her chapter on the encyclopedists of the ­Middle Ages, Elizabeth Keen compares the worldviews of Isidore, Rabanus Maurus, Honorius Augustodunensis, and the thirteenth-­century Bartholomew the En­glishman.1 This overview helps position Hildegard’s own view of the cosmos and the cosmic map created to accompany it in Scivias I.iii, the subject of this chapter. Of the writers Keen mentions, Hildegard was likely to have known three, as their writings circulated widely and w ­ ere prevalent in libraries in her region. Isidore’s views as summed up by Keen are presented in the vein of the theatrical, a mode of understanding that has been advanced by other scholars as well. She says of Isidore: “the ‘seen world’ is represented as being all around the Christian, who must be discerning and make the right moral choices.”2 This way of thinking is very close to Hildegard’s. She wrote at a time when many Christian theologians in western Eu­rope w ­ ere seeking to use the cosmos as a tool for teaching and as a reflection of the nature of God and of God’s relationship to ­human beings. In such a framework, ideas that the strug­gle of ­humans for goodness is cosmic and that the universe has been created as a setting for this dramatic and epic journey ­were paramount. ­These ideas ­were reflected not only in writings such as Honorius’s Imago mundi but also in the ways in which theologians and scientists planned out their maps of the cosmos. Honorius’s description, like Hildegard’s, is profoundly visual, often calling on his reader to “see” what he is expounding, but unlike with Scivias, we have no paintings or drawing of the cosmos ­imagined by him and made u ­ nder his auspices.3 With Hildegard we have both her own complex theological exegesis and the cosmic map alongside it, the only such opportunity for study from the twelfth c­ entury.4 Hildegard’s map of the cosmos is both highly unusual and rooted in tradition and in her own times (Figure 5.1 and Plate IX). She describes the cosmos as an egg

Fig. 5.1. The Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii, from W, fol. 14r.

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with a flaming outer shell: “­After this I saw a vast instrument, round and shadowed, in the shape of an egg, small at the top, large in the ­middle and narrowed at the bottom; outside it, surrounded by its circumference, t­ here was a bright fire with, as it w ­ ere, a shadowy zone u ­ nder it. And in that fire ­there was a globe of sparkling flame so g­ reat that the ­whole instrument was illuminated by it, over which three l­ ittle torches ­were arranged in such a way that by their fire they held up the globe lest it fall.”5 It is a fascinating exercise to compare the cosmos of Scivias to that found in the Liber divinorum operum I.ii, the treatise that Hildegard completed over two de­ cades ­after Scivias. As seen in the quotation below from the LDO, Hildegard also provided a rationale for changing her concept of the cosmic shape from that of an egg to that of a round wheel. The work of the pre­sent study is to explore her ­earlier ideas as found in Scivias. As t­ hese concepts w ­ ere expanded upon in the l­ater work, the LDO provides a more complete understanding of the original as well, “­whole, round and whirling.” The Voice of the Living Light explains the situation: “But when the instrument described above was laid out in your ­earlier visions in the shape of an egg, this was to show that only the division of the ele­ments was signified in that likeness, ­because an egg’s layers, by which it is divided into its constituent parts, are a bit like the way the cosmos is devised of the ele­ments. But now the circumference and the correct proportion of t­ hese ele­ments are shown only in a wheel, though neither of ­t hese holds a complete likeness of the figure of the work in ­every detail, b ­ ecause it exists everywhere w ­ hole, round, and whirling. Rather, a globe that is w ­ hole and whirling better imitates the cosmos in its e­ very part.” 6 In Scivias the map of the cosmos is in the shape of an egg. Peter Dronke has prepared a compendium of writers from the antique and medieval worlds who envisioned the cosmos in this shape and provided extracts from some of their writings and references to the texts.7 The tradition outlined in his work includes the consensus that the “shell” of the cosmos is made of a heavenly fire, with a layer or two in between that and the “yolk,” which is the earth. The Carolingian authors listed are Eriugena, in his commentary on Martianus and in his Periphyseon, an anonymous Sankt Gallen commentator on Boethius, Remigius of Auxerre, and Odo of Cluny.8 Contemporaries of Hildegard who use the image are William of Conches, Peter Abelard, Bernard Silvestris, Milo, and Honorius Augustodunensis.9 Rupert of Deutz described the days of creation paralleling the six days of Holy Week: in the night before the dawn of the first day, the Spirit hovered over the world like a bird sitting on an egg.10 But Hildegard’s use of the image of the egg is very dif­fer­ent from any of ­t hose encountered in Dronke’s study, and he described the uniqueness of Hildegard’s plan when situating it in the tradition as brought forth into the twelfth ­century:



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Where the other twelfth-­century cosmologists had presented the world-­egg schematically—­only Milo evoking the actions of the cosmic marriage taking place within it—­Hildegard pre­sents a turbulent drama of the cosmic pro­cesses: within the egg all is dynamic, ­there is a ceaseless interpenetration of creative and destructive forces; the four chief winds of heaven, set each in a dif­fer­ent layer of the egg, release radiant or baneful energy with equal vio­lence—­only the rain that gives the universe moisture would seem to alternate vio­lence with gentleness. The cyclic ebullitions of sun and moon are so tumultuous that the other planets are needed to stabilize them. This egg does not, like Abelard’s, hatch into a fully formed universe: it is the universe in flux, exposed to the never-­ending interplay of divine and daemonic forces.11 Hildegard’s cosmic egg and the drawing accompanying it in the illuminated Scivias I.iii are indeed like nothing e­ lse that can be found in theological treatises or in medieval art. In its largest sense, the cosmic egg as planned on the Rupertsberg is a combination of two cosmographies: it is both a wind chart and a map of the cosmos, following a Ptolemaic scheme. Each of ­these features ­will be described in turn, and then the power­ful result of joining the two models into one vast statement about the polarized nature of the universe, which for Hildegard is sacramental, w ­ ill be considered, especially in regard to her explication of the Eucharist as found in Scivias II.vi. In Hildegard’s cosmos, the forces of good and evil emphasized in her hexameron are in violent conflict, one only to be resolved at the end of time.

The Winds in Scivias I.iii Medieval wind diagrams have been studied in detail by Barbara Obrist, who divides them into two large periods of development.12 The first of t­ hese, beginning with Isidore’s De rerum natura, traded upon a Greco-­Roman tradition that treated the winds as subluminary atmospheric phenomena.13 The second period began in the twelfth c­ entury when “theories on winds occasionally merged with views that had them originate in, or even above, the celestial sphere and that therefore related them to the Godhead.”14 The manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 614 is a cosmological treatise copied sometime around 1120–40 and containing a wind diagram (fol. 34v) (Figure 5.2a). The number of windheads are traditional: twelve, divided into groups of three and arrayed around a set of three circles representing the cosmos.15 ­Here

Fig. 5.2. Twelve Heads of the Winds, from a treatise on astronomy, twelfth ­century: (a) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 614, fol. 34v; (b) windheads from Liber floridus, Ghent, Universiteit Ghent Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92, fol. 16r.



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the balance between winds and their forces are seen sustaining the ­whole. A diagram from the Liber floridus, dating from around 1120, also shows the balancing forces of the winds (Figure 5.2b).16 In other depictions, four winds are seen as restrained by four angels, drawing on an understanding of Apocalypse 7, this keeping with the idea that ­t here is a need for balance between the four winds and their cosmic powers; ­unless they are restrained, they ­will do harm.17 One of the most famous examples is in the Ottonian Bamberg Apocalypse (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Cod. Msc. Bibl. 140, fol. 17v), made at Reichenau in the first de­ cades of the eleventh ­century. In this painting the four angels admonish and teach the four winds.18 The need for restraint points to the idea that the winds are dangerous to ­humans, irrational, and storm-­inciting.19 The passage also references a time when all the “signed” w ­ ill be assembled, with the implication that the winds may be unleashed at that point. This was a major theme in Hildegard’s cosmology, as ­will be seen in Chapter 8. In many wind diagrams and cosmographical maps, the winds have tripartite heads, representing the multidirectionality of each wind.20 One of the most famous maps that includes windheads in its corners is the Girona embroidery, made sometime in the ­later eleventh or early twelfth ­century.21 This magnificent work may have been created by the Benedictine nuns of Sant Daniel de Girona; it shows the g­ reat complexity that was pos­si­ble in large-­scale embroidered works from the period.22 Christ is in the center, as the agent of creation, with a heavi­ly restored face; the spirit that moves upon the ­waters is a dove with a cruciform halo. On the viewer’s left is darkness and to the right the light, separated on the first day. The totality is placed in a cosmographical framework, with four windheads in the far corners, h ­ ere the sustaining forces of the cosmos. Th ­ ese unusual depictions show the winds as angelic creatures, each holding two trumpets in their arms. They are seated on curious instruments which they squeeze with their legs, so that a third stream of air comes out from each rider’s bellow. The total effect is to give each of the four winds the three streams of air found in many l­ater medieval wind diagrams and cosmographic charts. The embroidery seems to have been made so that ­t here are groups of dark threads arrayed beyond the golden band that contains the Log­os and the stages of creation in this prelapsarian model.23 The windheads in Hildegard’s map of the cosmos (Scivias I.iii) are carefully planned so that they oppose each other and create the balance necessary to keep the instrument aloft and functioning.24 As can be seen in Figure 5.1 and in Plate IX, each of the four is a tripartite figure, comprised of three heads blowing forth airstreams in dif­fer­ent directions.25 Hildegard’s windheads are very dif­fer­ent, not so much in design from t­ hose found in con­temporary diagrams but in their locations

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within the cosmos. Each exists in a par­tic­u­lar zone of the cosmos, and its location helps define the allegorical meanings Hildegard has assigned to each windhead as well as to the zones themselves. The first windhead is located in the fiery outer shell of the cosmos, and it is positioned on the southernmost or right part of the map (the east is at the top). As can be seen, this windhead is red, and its streams of air are red as well. Hildegard explains: “But as you see, from the fire that surrounds the instrument issues a blast with whirlwinds, which shows that from Almighty God, Who fills the w ­ hole world with his power, truth rushes forth and spreads with words of justice, which truly demonstrate to humanity the same living and true God.”26 It is crucial to the entire working of the Hildegardian cosmos that ideas about truth are constantly engendered by God and made available to ­human beings, I believe, in the forms of the virtues, which play a vital role in the workings of the w ­ hole. The fiery zone surrounding the instrument is one that has long held a place in the cosmological understandings expounded in Western Christian scientific and theological thought (see Chapter 1). In this dimension of her map, Hildegard holds fast to tradition. But the next windhead introduces a zone that seems to be primarily of Hildegard’s making in a cosmological map, the dark underbelly of the zone of fire. This zone, seemingly the realm of Satan’s evil blasts, is engaged in constant warfare with the fiery power reigning above it. Just as the fiery zone issues forth blasts of truths, so this windhead to the north belches out lies and falsehoods and possesses all the stormy power of the natu­ral world: “In that zone too, ­there was a dark fire of such g­ reat horror that I could not look at it, whose force shook the ­whole zone, full of thunder, tempest and exceedingly sharp stones both large and small.”27 The madness and murder, represented by the killing of Abel by Cain, are spread by the winds of this zone; but t­ hese are countermanded by the heavenly disposition to justice. Indeed, the Divine Majesty observes the stormy insanity of this smoldering zone with a watchful eye and is able to suppress it. The winds facing each other on the south and the north spread forth the good and evil thoughts that war constantly throughout the cosmos. But beneath t­hese two directly engaged outer zones is yet another zone, stirred by the windhead located on the bottom of the map, that is, in the west. This shoots out its airstreams into the ether, where the stars, planets, and the Moon are located. The Moon is a globe of white fire, and it receives its brilliant light from the sun. In its turn, it spills out its received light to the stars that surround it in the ether, so sun, moon, and stars are in an ongoing relationship, and one with allegorical significance, as w ­ ill be explained in our discussion of the Eucharist. The last windhead to be discussed by Hildegard is that to the east, and it sits on top of the watery zone that surrounds the earth. Like all the other winds, this has a blast that goes through the entire



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cosmos, and in this case it provides ­water of varying kinds to the ­whole, this too with sacramental powers: “And beneath that ether I saw watery air with a white zone beneath it, which diffused itself h ­ ere and t­here and imparted moisture to the ­whole instrument. And when it suddenly contracted it sent forth sudden rain with ­great noise, and when it g­ ently spread out it gave a pleasant and g­ ently falling rain.”28 Hildegard’s commentary on this windhead and its actions leads to a subject of major significance in her cosmology: the ways in which the very structure of the universe is sacramental and represents allegorically the salvific actions extended to ­people through the Church. E ­ very part of her cosmic plan relates to this idea, and the eastern windhead initiates the mysteries. She says that the watery air that gives moisture to the w ­ hole represents “baptism in the Church,” bringing to the ­whole world “the overflowing w ­ aters of salvation for believers.”29 For example, Hildegard uses the fourth windhead and the w ­ ater imagery to allegorize it not only for baptism but also for preaching. Th ­ ose who explain the meanings of baptism and other themes are like the vari­ous kinds of w ­ ater stirred by the fourth windhead located in the east. Sometimes their words are like a flood coming in “rapid abundance.” But other times baptism is preached “with sweet moderation, so that it reaches the p­ eople for whom it is meant discreetly by a gentle watering.”30 The balance between the four windheads in Hildegard’s diagram holds every­ thing in place, ­until when Judgment ­will come and time ­will end (see Chapter 8). Of t­ hese allegorical meanings, that of the Eucharist is the most complex and detailed, as w ­ ill be seen in the discussion to follow.

Cosmographic Details: Tradition Transformed in Hildegard’s Plan Walters 73, an En­glish treatise on cosmology dated to 1180–1199, contains a diagram of the cosmos and represents a way of arraying it prevalent during Hildegard’s lifetime and ­earlier (Figure 5.3).31 As is the case with most diagrams representing the cosmos during the ­earlier medieval period, a calm reigns over all, and the strife depicted in wind charts, and in Hildegard’s Cosmic Egg, is not pre­sent. The Earth is in the center of the cosmos, and it is surrounded by ­those heavenly bodies, the planets (from the Greek “planetoi,” for wanderers), observable as changing their locations to the naked eye.32 As can been seen in Walters 73, the order of planets has the Earth in the center, followed, in concentric circles moving outward, by the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The planets are located in their circles in a straight line, moving directly up from the Earth.

Fig. 5.3. Two twelfth-­century renderings of the cosmos. Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MS 73, fol. 2v.



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The Liber floridus (referenced above in the discussion of the winds), dated around 1120, contains a diagram that shows the planets arrayed in their circular orbits around the Earth, and a nearly exact copy of this diagram can be found in the ­later twelfth-­century copy of the treatise now in Wolfenbüttel.33 The diagrams in Figure 5.4 add a dimension to ­those in Figure 5.3. Figure 5.4a depicts a T-­O (terrarum orbis) map at the center of the cosmos, superimposed on the earth, and 5.4b shows a twelfth-­century close-up of the center of a T-­O map. The T-­O map in Figure 5.4b indicates a division of the continents that was first advanced by Isidore and gives Jerusalem pride of place at the center of the Earth.34 A concise description of this kind of map is found in an essay by John F. Moffitt: “most likely having no known pre-­Christian prototype, is the extremely schematic ‘T-­O map.’ Standardized in format, such maps consist of a disk, the ‘O,’ traversed by a horizontal bar, from the center of which a short vertical is dropped to the bottom, thus forming a ‘T.’ The top center point of the T marks the site of Jerusalem, Civitas Dei, and the other three legs stand for the Don River (left), the Nile (right), and the Mediterranean. The narrow sea ‘in the m ­ iddle of the lands’ also separates Eu­rope (left) from Africa (right) and Asia (above). Since the East (Oriens), which came to be identified as the locus of the terrestrial paradise, is placed at the top of the planisphere such maps are automatically ‘oriented.’ ”35 The detailed depiction of the T-­O map found in some cosmographical diagrams seen in a mid-­twelfth-­century copy of Isidore’s Etymologiae, Aix-­en-­Provence, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 25, fol. 293r (see Figure 5.4b) helps us understand the very center of Hildegard’s Cosmic Egg.36 Indeed, the mountain resting on the crossbar of the T in this diagram suggests the artistic understanding that may have inspired this feature of the Hildegard painting. Hildegard’s diagram of the cosmos is based on ­t hese inherited traditions, although she never names the heavenly bodies (except for the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon) in her commentary on the diagram (see Plate IV and Figure 5.1). The Earth is at the center, and, as is the case with the Walters diagrams, it occupies the greatest amount of space. The other planets are located on a straight axis that proceeds upward to the top of the diagram, as in the diagram found in Walters 73 (and as in many other medieval diagrams). More than any other diagram in existence, the earth in Hildegard’s diagram is drawn with a g­ reat amount of detail, from its windhead to its watery air-­like surface that features green islands floating on top. In the center of the earth itself is a stream of w ­ ater, representing the moisture on the earth. It penetrates into the green mountain that ­faces in two directions. In the east it is flooded with golden light, but in the north, all is darkness. As is often the case with Hildegard’s drawings, she has taken a three-­dimensional object and

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Fig. 5.4. The cosmos with a T-­O map, from the Liber floridus: (a) Ghent, University Library, BHSL.HS.0092, fol. 94v; (b) Isidore, Etymologies, a T-­O map, mid-­twelfth ­century, Bibliothèque Méjanes, Aix-­en-­Provence MS 0025 (0914), p. 293r.

squeezed it flat so all dimensions can be observed at a glance. To reconstruct her model of the earth within the watery globe, one has to pull it up. Then the green mountain could be compared to that found in the painting for Scivias I.i (see Chapter 3, Figure 3.2, and Plate III). ­ ere in Scivias I.iii, relates to the The mountain, as found both in Scivias I.i and h choices that h ­ uman beings make in their lives between goodness and evil, allegorized by the light and darkness on ­either side of the mountain at the center of the earth in Scivias I.iii and the win­dows with dual ­faces that fill the mountain in Scivias I.i. This center seems to be based on a T-­O diagram, a commonplace in Hildegard’s time, and a tradition she prob­ably would have known. But she has adapted this form to accommodate her theological arguments as expressed in the treatise. Taken together, ­these images define the cosmos and its ­grand purpose: it is a playing ground for h ­ uman choice and decision making. Hildegard says of the two areas surrounding the watery tongue at the center of the instrument, and falling to ­either side of the green mountain: “This shows humankind’s g­ reat choice between dev­ilish impiety

Fig. 5.4. b

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and divine goodness, evil deception giving the many miseries of damnation to the reprobate, and salvation giving the ­great happiness of redemption to the elect.”37 The planets encircling the Earth are allegorized as players in a drama that unfolds at the center, where the mountain of choice is located.38 Although clearly based on one or more cosmographical diagrams that Hildegard must have seen, her plan is unique. Hers is the only such diagram that deliberately places the planets in zones that are part of an egg, with a shell, an egg white, and a yolk-­like earth. Her ideas resemble ­t hose of her older con­temporary Honorius Augustodunensis. In his scheme, the shell is heaven, the egg white is the pure ether, and the yolk is air. Inside the yolk is a drop of fat, the Earth.39 In fact, as we have seen, in her subsequent treatise LDO Hildegard left ­behind the idea of an egg-­shaped cosmos and moved to the more typical rounded sphere.40 The plan of the cosmos found in the LDO, with its allegorized animals becoming the twelve windheads, was inspired to a degree by another kind of commonly circulating cosmic diagram, one that placed the signs of the zodiac in the outer rim of the instrument, a version of which can be seen in yet another of the diagrams found in the twelfth-­century cosmographical treatise found in Walters 73. Hildegard did not wish to work with astrological signs, and in fact the second half of Scivias I.iii is a critique of astrology in general and t­ hose who try to predict actions through the positions of the stars. Still she knew the tradition and, as with so much in her theological writing, transformed it into something uniquely her own. But in Scivias, the egg prevails, both as the shape of the cosmos in her commentary and in the spectacular painting accompanying it. In her scheme the g­ reat fiery shell surrounding the cosmos contains four planets, the Sun, the largest entity in the schema (next to Earth, that is), Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Hildegard adapted ­t hese to create a trinitarian Godhead reigning within the flaming outer layer of the cosmos, but then with Christ, the Sun, as the ­great illuminator of the ­whole. Hildegard’s description of this outer layer of the egg relates powerfully to her discussions of the six days of Creation and to the purpose of the creation of the cosmos as w ­ hole: “And in that fire, ­there was a globe of sparkling flame so ­great that the ­whole instrument was illuminated by it, over which three l­ittle torches are arranged in such a way that by their fire they held up the globe lest it fall.” 41 This cosmic arrangement, with the Trinity (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and the Sun, functioning as the agent of creation, is allegorized by Hildegard to demonstrate that through its shining on earth the Sun demonstrates that the Son of God, who left the angelic realm, “in the heavenly places, descended to earth and showed h ­ umans, who 42 exist in soul and body, heavenly ­t hings.”  Hildegard’s dark zone, the one located beneath the fiery zone containing the Sun and the three planets Mars, Jupiter, and



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Saturn, contains no planet, only a raging windhead and piles of smoldering rocks, allegorized as vices (see Figure 5.1 and Plate IX). Planetary motion as representative of theological truths is sustained in the ways the other planets are represented as well. U ­ nder the fiery shell are the three planets located along with the stars in the white of the egg, the pure ether. H ­ ere Venus and Mercury (not named but clearly recognizable from the cosmographic tradition upon which she drew) are allegorized as two torches that sustain the Moon, and for which they have a power­ful purpose. They represent the two major sections of the Bible, the Old Testament and the New, and they connect the Moon, the unconquered Church, “to the divine rules of the celestial mysteries, holding the Church back from rushing into a variety of dif­fer­ent practices” (see Figure 5.1 and the detail in Figure 5.7).43 Hildegard placed significant emphasis in her description of the cosmic egg upon the interrelationship of the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars: “in it [the ether] I saw a globe of white fire and ­great magnitude over which two ­little torches ­were placed, holding that globe so that it would not exceed the mea­sure of its course. And in that ether w ­ ere scattered many bright spheres, into which the white globe from time to time poured itself out and emitted its brightness, and then moved back u ­ nder the globe of red fire and renewed its flames from it, and then again sent them out into t­ hose spheres.” 44 In Hildegard’s exegesis upon the meanings of this visual expression, she defines the nature of the cosmos in order to explore the relationships between the Church (as the City of God), Christ, as its head, and the saints, produced as they are by this Church, in the past, the pre­sent, and the f­ uture.45 The Church acquires its light from Christ and then pours it out in miraculous works “done by the perfected,” who are the saints.46 The Moon moves back and forth in its relationship to the Sun, from being dark to being bright, and its overflowing Sun-­given light produces stars. The Earth, lying below the Moon, and yet appearing connected to it by a stream of air from its windhead, is joined to the entire instrument so much that it moves slightly when the greatness of God’s miracles is sensed and experienced, as well as when the ­great woe of Satan’s murderous ways shakes the firmament. Accordingly, this epic stage is the setting for e­ very life, and for Hildegard’s play, the Ordo virtutum.

A Unique Feature of Hildegard’s Cosmogram: The Dark Zone and Satan Hildegard’s cosmic diagram has many features in common with the plans in circulation in her time and region, although the theological exegesis is uniquely her own, at least to a significant degree. But one feature of the Cosmic Egg not other­w ise

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known in any other scheme is the dark zone that lies beneath the fiery circle enclosing the “instrumentum.” As has been shown, the cosmos Hildegard designed in Scivias has many points of correspondence with the cosmos visualized in her ­later Liber divinorum operum, although the differences are greater than the similarities. LDO’s cosmos has a fiery zone and a dark zone encircling the instrument, as is the case in Scivias. The planets are arrayed so that ­t here are three in the fiery zone (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) and three in the ether (Venus, Mercury, and the Moon), as in Scivias. The Sun in the Scivias diagram is also located in the fiery zone; ­t here are no planets in the dark zone, however. Yet, amazingly, by contrast, the Sun is located in the dark zone of the LDO model, the zone of “dark fire.” It represents God’s wrath and the power of judgment administered by Christ. This cosmic scheme is more holistic than the dualistic plan found in Scivias and does not give evil its own location within the diagram. The Scivias diagram promotes the duality of good and evil that is fundamental to the treatise, its illuminations, and the lyr­ics and the play contained within it. Hildegard wrote Scivias during the very time that Christian cosmologists w ­ ere starting to think about the “locations” of both paradise and hell in their cosmic schemata. Barbara Obrist, one of the few scholars to write about this topic and its evolution in this period, says: “the structure of the universe was not altered to accommodate temporal axis of the history of salvation ­u ntil the early twelfth ­century. Only then was the cosmic space further subdivided to accommodate the two opposing of places of eternal retribution, the celestial paradise in an outward sphere and hell at the center of the system. While the spiritual nature of the first place was not questioned, the nature of the second remained the subject of much debate.” 47 In her overview, Obrist discusses the theologically oriented cosmology that emerged in the early twelfth c­ entury, a subject discussed in Chapter 1. She believes that the two prime movers in regard to this development ­were Honorius Augustodunensis and William of Conches, the former of whose writings Hildegard surely would have known as his works ­were exceedingly popu­lar in her region; his Imago mundi was completed perhaps by 1111. Very dif­fer­ent from the Platonist William of Conches, Honorius is one of the first to try to locate both heaven and hell in his cosmological scheme: “the introduction into cosmography of both infernus and paradisus as structurally opposing places does constitute a novelty. Within the genre of early-­to mid-­century cosmographies, Honorius’s Imago mundi stands out as unique in its restructuring of the body of the universe in accordance with scripture and the temporal dimension of the history of salvation.” 48 Obrist says that Honorius has rearranged traditional materials in his scheme to make a physical place for hell and that he also implies “the corporeality of infernal



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fire.” 49 Honorius’s apparent desire to make a location in the cosmos for hell might have been an inspiration for Hildegard’s “dark zone.” Hildegard’s description of the dark zone in Scivias is very dif­fer­ent from that found in the LDO, and it seems that she must have known about the vari­ous kinds of ideas in play in between the time when she finished Scivias and when she worked on the LDO.50 The cosmos found in Scivias is exceedingly dramatic, the power­f ul sense of evil smoldering in the postlapsarian universe is constantly stirred up, and Hildegard evokes Cain, the first of God’s creatures in the Bible to commit murder. ­Here too in the dark zone are located “exceedingly sharp stones,” and ­t hese, as can be seen in the painting, glow with hell’s fire (see Plate IX). Hildegard’s description connects this zone to Satan, the “ancient betrayer,” although near the end of the description his plots and snares stir God’s vengeance and desire for justice (­here, too, her quotation from the prefatory vision is in italics): In this zone also ­there is a dark fire of such horror that you cannot look at it. This means that the ancient betrayer’s most evil and most vile snares vomit forth blackest murder with such ­great passion that the ­human intellect cannot fathom its insanity; whose force shakes the ­whole zone, ­because murder includes in its horror all diabolical malignities. In the first born ­human hatred boiled up out of anger and led to fratricide, full of thunder, tempest, and exceedingly sharp stones large and small . . . ​While it makes its thunders heard, the bright fire and the winds and the air are all in commotion, ­because when murder cries out in its eagerness to shed blood, it arouses the justice and an outburst of flying rumors and in increased disposition to vengeance on the part of right judgment.51 The antiphon for the angels, “O gloriosissimi,” discussed in Chapter 4, has a section devoted to the spectacular, cosmos-­altering Fall of Satan and his minions. Scivias depends on describing escape from the Dev­il’s snares and wiles at e­ very turn, and so too does her cosmographical diagram and her understanding of the universe as a ­whole, staged though it is in her thought for the ongoing epic b ­ attle for h ­ uman salvation. Although the Devil is pre­sent in ­every book of Scivias, the fullest description of him (and he does seem to be gendered) comes in Book II, vision 7, parts of which are quoted below. Satan is a creature whose body is a mélange of vari­ous beasts. He is in general a worm, that is, a snake, but dark in color, striped, and covered with festering sores, with deadly poison spewing out from his head to his feet. His eyes are bloodshot and burning, his mouth that of a viper, but unlike ­actual snakes, he has bristled ears and h ­ uman hands. He is chained, and the left side of his

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head has been so crushed that his jaw is dislocated.52 This is a reference to Genesis 3: Hildegard makes it clear that this maimed Satan is described ­after the time of Christ, and his mortal wound is that inflicted by the Virgin Mary through the Incarnation.53 Many of his other attributes relate directly to Hildegard’s cosmic design in Scivias; he is made of ele­ments that are related to ­those constituting the region of terra: liquid, air, fire, and “earth”: “And I saw sharp arrows whistling loudly from its mouth, and black smoke exhaling from its breast, and a burning fluid boiling up from its loins, and a hot whirlwind blowing from its navel, and the uncleanness of frogs issuing from its bowels . . . ​And the hideous and foul-­smelling vapor that came out of it infected many p­ eople with its own perversity.”54 Hildegard’s descriptions of Satan are expressed in the painting accompanying Scivias II.vii (Figure 5.5). ­There are details in the painting that add more information about her conceptions of him, especially regarding his relationship to the dark layer of the cosmos and its stench. The location in the frame itself places him between the fiery circle, with its tongues of flames, and the watery circle surrounding the earth, as can be seen in the figure. Above him are rows of ­humans in vari­ous stages of yearning for and movement ­toward heaven. The vari­ous dark threads of chaos from which he is made are clear references to the zone in which souls are trapped in the painting accompanying Scivias II.1 (Plate VII and Figure 4.2). This underscores Hildegard’s major theme that ­humans ­were snared by Satan in their own fall from grace, inherited at the beginning from the actions of Adam and Eve; ­these trapped souls are the lamenters at the opening of the Ordo virtutum. Another connection between the Satan portrait and the Cosmic Egg is the excrement that flows from Satan’s hindquarters. It seems Satan is indeed excreting the smoldering rocks that occupy the dark zone, identified by Hildegard in Scivias ­ umans in I.iii.10 and Scivias II.vii.20 as the stinking vices that continually rebuff h their quest for heavenly redemption. Virtues are ideas in the mind of God; vices are manufactured in the bowels of Satan. In this way, Hildegard gives attention to the dark zone of the Cosmic Egg and further explains its meaning as a wall between h ­ uman striving and redemption. The ways in which the stones are painted in Scivias I.iii and II.vii suggest that the artists had been instructed by Hildegard to use art to make the connection explicit. Although he writhes upon a golden background, Satan’s figure is treated in ways quite dif­fer­ent from ­those of any other figures found in the Scivias illuminations. And the techniques of painting used for Satan and found as Figure 5.5 offer further clues concerning how ­t hese paintings may have been made and the kinds of artistic models followed by the paint­ers. At some points, the observer can step back and appreciate the ironies of a painting like this and some of the details that

Fig. 5.5. Satan. Scivias II.vii, from W, fol. 115v.

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characterize its making, for it may be related to materiality within the Rupertsberg community. In the Introduction I suggested that Hildegard’s sketches for the paintings may have been worked initially as embroideries and that t­ hese may have ­later served as the models followed by the professional atelier that completed the work of the paintings for Wiesbaden 1. This theory makes sense to me ­because it gives Hildegard and the w ­ omen of the Rupertsberg owner­ship of the designs, so closely related are they to Hildegard’s treatise and to her lyr­ics. If the ­women themselves did not actually paint them, which seems to be the case, then how e­ lse ­were they planned and designed? The ­women would have been highly skilled in the craft of needlework, as was typical of their era and location.55 The beautifully wrought thirteenth-­century antependium embroidery now in the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels may have been made by the nuns of the Rupertsberg (see Plate X).56 The piece is dated to the fourth de­cade of the thirteenth c­ entury not only by its style but also by the figures represented, including patrons Siegfried von Eppstein II, archbishop of Mainz (d. 1230), and Agnes, Duchess of Nancy and Lotharingia (d. 1226), and several nuns, including Domina Elisabet, who was magistra from 1210 to 1235.57 The embroidery also includes a portrait of Hildegard, holding the church she built and standing next to Rupert, the patron saint. Upon close examination, tiny threads can be seen outlining the figures, and ­these originally served to affix small seed pearls to the outlines; in some cases a few pearls remain. It is characteristic of the paintings in Wiesbaden 1 to see the constant use of small white dots to outline the figures as well as objects associated with them. The individual rays of the Sun in the Cosmic Egg and the tongues of flame in the outer layer of the structure are good examples of this technique (see Plate IX). A comparison of some of the “pearled” figures and objects in the paintings to the portrait of Satan reveals a striking difference (see Figure 5.5). He is affixed to his background by slanted lines. Not only is he chained, but he appears to be stitched down, and the “threads” surrounding him can be seen clearly, making him resemble a cloth appliqué. The flaming tongues by contrast at the top of the painting are outlined with the small white dots that may represent the seed pearls used by embroiderers to outline religious figures. In fact, in this conquered and chained position, Satan has been pinned down in a­ ctual practice by the ­women who may have designed and the original model. This materiality is reflective of the way he is treated at the end of the Ordo virtutum: Victory: Bravest and most glorious warriors, come, help me to vanquish this deceitful one!



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Virtues: O sweetest warrior, in the scorching fountain that swallowed up the voracious wolf—­glorious, crowned one, how gladly ­we’ll fight against that trickster, at your side! Humility: Bind him then, you shining Virtues! Virtues: Queen of us all, we obey—we w ­ ill carry out your o ­ rders totally. Victory: Comrades, rejoice: the age-­old snake is bound!58 If indeed the model ­were—in some stage of its design—an embroidery made by the nuns of the Rupertsberg ­under Hildegard’s instruction, then the ­women bound Satan literally in the craft, and once again in the enacting of the play. Hildegard was described as a hands-on leader for the w ­ omen in her care, and this would have been an excellent example of how to make multiple meanings within community. The importance of the tools of both the scriptorium and the room for working needlecraft is demonstrated in Hildegard’s secret language, which includes detailed vocabulary for the implements of both rooms (see also Chapter 2).59 Clearly ­t hese two crafts—­copying and needlework—­were of major importance on the Rupertsberg, and the work on the designs for the paintings and the production of Wiesbaden 1 may have allowed the w ­ omen to join their skills in a collective endeavor both as craftspersons and as members of a worshipping community defeating the Satan challenging them from within.

The Moon, the Sun, and the Eucharist That Hildegard’s map of the cosmos, its Earth, its Sun, its planets, its Moon, and its winds, relates to her understanding of a cosmic model embodying sacramental action is perhaps the most creative and extraordinary of her ideas. It is one that developed u ­ nder the sway of many influences and much thought and learning. But the combination of its components, as far as can be told, was hers alone. The design of the cosmos found in Scivias I.iii was designed to look forward to Scivias II.vi, her extensive commentary on the meanings of the Eucharist. She brought forward the workings of the universe in many subtle ways, and in so d ­ oing, made what happened in the heavens directly reflective of the actions of the altar. Most impor­tant in this understanding are the interrelationships between the Moon, an allegory for the unconquered Church, and the Sun, as a repre­sen­ta­tion of Christ. Taken together, ­these are in a partnership as spouses to save souls, especially through the actions of the sacraments.

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Hildegard’s vision concerning the Eucharist (Figure 2.1 and Plate I, and Figure 5.6) occurs just before that describing Satan (Figure 5.5, Scivias, II.vii), and it provides the antidote to the poisons that follow in the treatise. Both of ­t hese visions found in Book II of Scivias feature gradated ensembles of ­people: in Scivias II.vii, the many yearning for heaven are depicted, and in the second part of the two-­page painting accompanying Scivias II.vi, the groups of p ­ eople receiving the Eucharist are presented, depending on their degrees of readiness. Clearly, as w ­ ill be shown at the conclusion to this section, t­ here was a relationship between them, their actions, and the outcome of ­t hese actions. ­Here too Hildegard continued her thoughts concerning the cosmic importance of ­human choices between good and evil. The path to goodness involves the Church and the importance of penance and praise, an idea brought forth in both of t­ hese visions. The “true worshippers” of Scivias II.vii.25 can defeat Satan, although born fallen: their triumphs are pos­ si­ble ­because they offer appropriate praise and reverence. The redeemed ­people depicted in Scivias II.vi are defined by the ways in which they receive the sacramental gift shown in the upper zone of the drawing, as penitents absolved of their sins. In both instances the role of the Church is foremost, and Hildegard has structured her cosmic diagram and motion within it to make the actions of the Moon as a “saint-­producing” Church. Th ­ ese actions in turn are seen operating within congregations and groups of p ­ eople. The Moon, then, is of major importance in Hildegard’s cosmology. She positioned it in the zone of ether surrounding the Earth, as was traditional in medieval cosmological maps (see Figure  5.4). But then she expanded further on the commonplace that the Moon represents the unconquered Church. This is a standard idea, one Hildegard would have known from any number of patristic au­ reat says in his homily for the Ascension: “Habacuc also thors.60 Gregory the G says about the glory of His Ascension, ‘The Sun was raised up and the Moon stood in its course.’ Who can be called the Sun except the Lord, and what the Moon except the Church?” 61 As can be seen in Plate IX and Figure 5.1 and the detail in Figure 5.7, the position of the Moon gives it an intermediary role between the Earth and the Sun and relates it to the stars and other planets (especially the twin torches Venus and Mercury just above it) also found in its same zone in the diagram of the Cosmic Egg. The Church, too, is the intermediary between the ­people and the Divinity, especially through the actions of the sacraments.62 The Church appears allegorized as female in several places in the treatise, but its appearance is most dramatic, and most closely tied to Hildegard’s cosmology, in Scivias, Book II, vision vi, preface, and in the first of the two paintings associated with this vision (Figure 2.1 and Plate I): “I

Fig. 5.6. Communion. Scivias II.vi, from W, fol. 86v.

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Fig. 5.7. Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii, from W, fol. 14r, detail.

saw the Son of God hanging on the cross, and the aforementioned image of a ­woman coming forth like a bright radiance from the ancient counsel. By divine power she was led to Him, and raised herself upward so that she was sprinkled by the blood from His side; and thus, by the w ­ ill of the Heavenly F ­ ather, she was joined with Him in happy betrothal and nobly dowered by His body and blood.” 63 That the ­woman in the painting appears to be serving at the altar is deliberately illustrative of Hildegard’s view of female ser­v ice at Mass, as described in Scivias II.vi.76. She says that the reason w ­ omen cannot serve as priests, approaching the altar, is ­because they are weak, dominated by men in the reception of the seed of procreation. But yet, they have participation in the holy rites through their chanting. What is more, ­those who are consecrated virgins receive the bridegroom as spouse, and therefore in him they have “the priesthood and all the ministry of the altar.” 64 The ­woman of the painting mystically allegorizes this special relationship of the nun as Church to Christ and to the action of the altar, in heaven and on earth.



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The two spectacular paintings that accompany this vision are among the most discussed among Hildegard’s works.65 In first of t­hese, fol. 86r, blood flows from Christ’s side in two streams. One stream comes into a cup held by the maiden Church, and the other strikes her on the face (Plate I and Figure  2.1). The voice from heaven says to Christ: “May she, O Son, be your Bride for the restoration of My ­people; may she be a ­mother to them, regenerating souls through the salvation of the Spirit and ­water.” 66 Thus, the scroll that unrolls from God’s hand, and that falls near the Cross on the viewer’s right, proclaims the meaning of the image Hildegard received from on high and relates the painting directly to the text of the treatise. The blue and starry background of the painting makes the meaning even clearer to the viewer: this is the cosmic Cross, and the altar in the lower zone of this first painting is located outside of earth and in the ethereal regions where the unconquered Church carries out its ritual practices. Upon this mystical altar are the cup and the host, and the radiating light from the Cross above illuminates t­ hese ele­ ments and gives them power. The personified Church appears again in the lower corner of the painting, gazing upward at four roundels. In ­these are contained four mysteries: the Nativity, Passion and Burial, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, also t­ hose mentioned in the canon of the Mass liturgy, the g­ reat prayer of consecration. Th ­ ese mysteries appear at the altar to signify that the Eucharist contains all of them, as a kind of summation of their meanings and as a pledge that their efficacy continues among the ­people ­until the end of the world, moving God to divine mercy day by day. The Voice of the Living Light explains the meaning of ­t hese historical displays of Christ’s humanity and suffering: “and my ­w ill is not to hide this, for I draw His elect on high to the heavenly places, that through them His body may be perfected in its predestined members.” 67 The next painting (on fol. 86v; see Figure 5.6) continues the progression from the cosmic Cross to the Earth by depicting the parallel Mass at an altar in a church.68 ­Here a priest in traditional garb consecrates the ele­ments of the Eucharist, the cup and the host seen beneath a cloth, and the open book reads “Te igitur,” the opening words of the Canon of the Mass.69 As the priest is saying t­ hese sacred texts, he is being observed by angels, who are representative of the joining of the earthly and the cosmic at this sacred moment. The ele­ments are lifted outside of the earthly sphere, irradiated, and returned, in the time it takes for a h ­ uman to breathe in and out: “And when the Gospel of peace had been recited and the offering to be consecrated had been placed on the altar, and the priest sang the praise of Almighty God, ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts,’ which began the mystery of the sacred rites, Heaven was suddenly opened and a fiery and inestimable brilliance descended over that offering and irradiated it completely with light, as the sun illumines anything its

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rays shine through. And thus illuminating it, the brilliance bore it on high into the secret places of Heaven and then replaced it on the altar.”70 Hildegard’s account of what happens when Earth and cosmos join is reflective of her descriptions of the ways the Sun and the Moon interact in Scivias I.iii. Her understanding of the interrelationship of the Sun (Christ and the Trinity) and the Moon (unconquered Church) is one of irradiation. The Sun pours out its light into the Moon (the white globe), and the Moon takes that light, and from time to time pours it out, in turn, into the ether for the manufacture of stars as described in the preface to Scivias I.iii, which contains her description of the vision of the cosmos: “But beneath that zone [the dark zone] was purest ether, with no zone beneath it, and in it I saw a globe of white fire and ­great magnitude over which two ­little torches ­were placed, holding that globe so that it would not exceed the mea­sure of its course. And in that ether w ­ ere scattered many bright spheres, into which the white globe from time to time poured itself out and emitted its brightness, and then moved back ­under the globe of red fire and renewed its flames from it, and then again sent them out into ­those spheres.”71 As with the economy of heavenly light found in the Fall of Satan and his minions, with the wasted light gathered by God and stored for ­human radiation, so h ­ ere too the collection of light from the Sun by the Church is then rescued and reused to make stars, and ­these stars are allegories for the saints. The Church, although sorrowful for the general state of humankind, still “marvels at the brightness of the works done by t­ hose perfected through o ­ thers.”72 Marveling at the perfected is the subject of nearly all of Hildegard’s liturgical chants. In Hildegard’s exegesis, Christ on the altar becomes the bridegroom of the Song of Songs 5:1, proclaiming that his friends should eat and drink their fill at the banquet he has prepared for them (Scivias II.vi.21). Once the Christian is baptized, s/he is welcome to feast: “be inebriated with love, you who are so dear to Me” (ibid.). The meal allows the alleviation of carnality; rather, it “awakens” the virtues in the banqueter. The next part of the exegesis moves to the words of the Canon that invoke the description of the Last Supper from Matthew 26:26–29, and the feasting continues, in the companionship of the disciples. The ranks of h ­ umans who line up in the final quadrant of the painting designed for Scivias II.vi are worshippers taking communion, divided into five states (see Figure 5.6). Unlike the baptism of infants, which takes place without full and knowing participation of the person receiving the sacrament, the Eucharist requires that the communicant make decisions: to be penitent and absolved of sin before reception and to receive of the heavenly feast and its glorious meanings with full knowledge and ac­cep­ tance. Praise is the outcome of this ac­cep­tance, the touchstone of cosmic interrelations between h ­ umans and the Divinity.



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Accordingly, as Hildegard described them, communicants in the first state are t­hose who acknowledge the real presence of Christ within the communion ele­ ments. ­These ­people are irradiated with light and their souls blaze with the celestial fire of the Holy Spirit; the kind of transforming power that irradiates the communion ele­ments on the altar is translated to their bodies on reception and they have Christ within (Scivias II.vi.52). The second state includes t­hose whose beliefs are not strong, but ­because they do not reject the meanings of the sacrament, they are “fed and satisfied” (Scivias II.vi.53). The hairy, dirty crowd of the third state have not purged themselves of sins before they approach. But mercy is extended to them b ­ ecause “worthy penitence arises in their minds” (Scivias II.vi.54). The fourth state includes t­ hose who are covered with the sharp thorns of anger, hate, and envy, and so are not in fit condition to receive; still, even ­t hose can seek grace through repentance (Scivias II.vi.55). And lastly the fifth state. Bloody and foul, like decayed corpses, t­ hese zombies approach the altar in states of denial. Yet even they, if ultimately penitent, can eventually drink from the fountain of salvation (Scivias II.vi.56). The message h ­ ere is one of mercy and forgiveness, that is, if p ­ eople w ­ ill open themselves up to the requisite penance. Yet t­ here is a reason that the discussion of Satan follows hard on this chapter concerning the Eucharist, her commentary on the sacrament forming the longest chapter in the entire treatise by a significant margin. Near the end, Hildegard warned that the Dev­il’s goal is to destroy the creatures he envies, and he seeks to break the trajectory that includes confession, ­humble penitence, and genuine sorrow for sins.73 To refuse to ask for mercy is to act like Satan. And Satan speaks directly at the end in Scivias II.vi.101: “For I w ­ ill accomplish in humankind on Earth that which I tried to do in Heaven, and make myself like the Most High. And if God is just, that power ­will not be taken from me, for humankind ­will consent to me and disobey God.” Hildegard then explains further: “the Devil bound humankind so closely to himself that h ­ umans wor74 shipped him instead of God, and denied God, the h ­ uman’s creator.”

Singing and the Sacramental Power of Praise: The Virginal Throng The letter Hildegard wrote to the prelates of Mainz in 1178 or 1179 is one of the most famous of all her writings at the pre­sent time (see also Chapters 3 and 8). Hildegard and her community w ­ ere placed ­under interdict ­because of the state of a person buried on their grounds, and this action meant they could not sing the Office or

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take part in the Mass liturgy. The letter is usually cited b ­ ecause it demonstrates the centrality Hildegard gave to the act of singing the Office to the salvation of the souls of monastics: “The body is the vestment of the spirit, which has a living voice, and so it is proper for the body, in harmony with the soul, to use its voice to sing praises to God.”75 The letter also has a good deal to say about the Mass liturgy and the taking of communion, which apparently the w ­ omen received once per month. The exegesis on the mysteries of the heavenly Eucharistic sacrifice and its connection to earthly liturgies; the role of the maiden Church as servant of the altar; the relationship of Moon, Sun, and stars to Church, Christ, and saints; and the artworks that accompany this long and complex liturgical commentary: all ­t hese are related as well to the practices of Hildegard’s convent and to their singing, which gave them, according to Hildegard, “all the ministry of the altar.” The layers of understanding w ­ ere created to make the experience of the liturgy of the Office and of the Mass one of cosmic importance, not just for the community but for each individual who knelt to receive the body and the blood. Hildegard placed the sacrament of faith at the center of her endeavors and of the workings of the universe and its meanings. The statement found in the letter to the prelates of Mainz is a summary of ideas also found in many of the chants sung in the liturgy of the Office of All Saints. In par­tic­u­lar the heavenly feast that is described in Hildegard’s chapter on the Eucharist, relating as it does directly to her ecclesiology, is also found in the text that was sung on All Saints’ Day at the Magnificat for First Vespers: “O how glorious is that kingdom in which all the saints rejoice with Christ; clothed in white robes they follow the lamb wherever it goes” (see Appendix 3 and discussion in Chapters 3 and 8). In this chant, which the young Hildegard would have sung on the eve of her consecration, the themes found in her l­ater liturgical commentary are very much in play, with the w ­ omen hoping through the vows they made to find their places at the ­table of the Lamb. ­These ideas are also are dominant in chants Hildegard composed for the liturgy, including the sequence for St. Rupert discussed in Chapter 3. Her set of four antiphons for the feast of the Dedication of the Church offer a prime example of ­these themes. The chants could have been sung ­every year on the Rupertsberg in cele­bration of the day on which the church was dedicated, perhaps in 1152.76 As t­ here are four of t­ hese antiphons, they might well have served as a set of psalter antiphons for both Lauds and Vespers of the feast. Of course, they could have been written for any number of situations, as all churches, monastic or other­w ise, celebrated the occasion of their dedications e­ very year.77 I believe, however, that t­ hese par­tic­u ­lar chants are statements about the cosmic strug­g le in which the heavenly Moon, allegory of



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the unconquered Church, plays a major role. In fact, they seem to have been written specifically with the understanding found in Scivias II.vi in mind, relating to the visionary statement found t­ here, and ultimately to the twofold painting accompanying this par­tic­u­lar vision in Wiesbaden 1. Dating of the chants is not pos­si­ble, but notated copies of two of them are found in the Dendermonde codex. As this is a fragmentary collection, it may have contained ­others; the texts of three of them are found in the so-­called Miscellany; and all four lyr­ics are found with m ­ usic in the Riesencodex.78 They also are statements not only about the cosmology of the Moon/Church but also about the maid who serves the altar as the Virgin Spouse of Christ. The bridal imagery that dominates in Scivias II.vi is ­here as well, and the antiphon “O uirgo ecclesia,” the first in the set, features the maiden Church, betrothed to Christ by his blood, as is found in the painting and in Hildegard’s exegesis, and serving at the altar of sacrifice, where she both catches the salvific liquid and is sprinkled with it as a sign of holy joining to the bridegroom. In the second part of the lyric, Christ’s “standard” is the Cross, a term that would resonate with Venantius Fortunatus’s (530–609) well-­k nown hymn “Vexilla regis.”79 The c­ hildren of the Church are the redeemed, known in Scivias I.iii also as the stars spewed out into the ether by the Moon, through the warming of the Sun. The second half of the antiphon for the Dedication of the Church, “O uirgo ecclesia,” reads, “But oh how precious is the blood of the Savior / who betrothed the Church to himself / with the King’s standard. Therefore he is seeking / her c­ hildren.” 80 The wiles of the Devil run like threads through the poetry of the four antiphons for the Dedication, most dramatically in “Nunc gaudeant,” where Satan appears as the vile snake who, through jealousy, had held h ­ umans captive in his maw. In this lyric too, the themes found in the painting for Scivias II.vi and in Hildegard’s exegesis on her vision predominate, as the redeemed shine like jewels in the blood of the Cross and sing praises as the c­ hildren of the Church: Now let the motherly heart of the Church rejoice, for in supernal symphony her c­ hildren are gathered into her bosom. So you, shameful serpent, are confounded, for ­t hose your jealousy held in its maw now gleam in the blood of God’s son. Praise then be yours, O King most high! Alleluia. The mystical typology of t­ hese lyric verses is underscored by the only use of Hildegard’s “Lingua ignota” in her chant texts, found in “O orzchis ecclesia,” the

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third of the set. H ­ ere the secret words are orchiz = immensa; caldemia = aroma; loifolum = populorum; crizanta = ornata; and chorzta = choruscans.81 The final sentence makes the anointed Church sparkle with the jewels of its saints, mentioned e­ arlier in the poem: “O, o, you are anointed, amid lofty song: you are a sparkling gem.” 82 ­These gems, the sparkling saints, are the stars, whose light w ­ ill increase to a par­tic­u­lar, apocalyptic moment in time. In the last of the set of four antiphons, “O choruscans lux stellarum,” the unconquered Church without “blemish or wrinkle” (Eph. 5:27) appears as the unspotted maiden, the bride at the royal banquet, encountered in discussion above of Scivias II.vi. This maiden reigns not only as the Moon (resplendent with the light of the stars, in Hildegard’s cosmology and in this poem as well) but also as typified by the Virgin Mary, with g­ reat emphasis on the song of the Church as emblematic of the redemption of the Cross through the sacraments, joining with the angelic throng: O glistening starlight, O resplendent, special form of the royal nuptials, O sparkling gem: You are arrayed as a noble person without blemish or wrinkle. You are a companion of angels and a citizen of the holy places. Flee, flee, the cave of the ancient destroyer, and come, come into the palace of the king.83 The singing and the jewels in t­ hese texts, as well as the flowing hair of the maiden, also recall the ways in which Hildegard arrayed the virgins in her monastery, as reported by Tengswich in a hostile letter written in 1148–50, the time when Hildegard was finishing Scivias: “They say that on feast days your virgins stand in the church with unbound hair when singing the psalms and that as part of their dress they wear white, silk veils, so long that they touch the floor. Moreover, it is said they wear crowns of gold filigree, into which are inserted crosses on both sides and the back, with a figure of the Lamb on the front, and that they adorn their fin­ gers with golden rings.” 84 Hildegard replied that the restrictions in the Bible on ­women’s clothing in church (esp. 1 Tim. 2:9) do not apply to consecrated ­women, for they are brides of Christ. The feast of the Lamb is especially evoked in Hildegard’s defense of her practices (which she does not deny), with reference to Apoc. 14:1–5, the mystical feast partaken by the saints in the com­pany of Christ at the end of time, but with deference given to the virgins in his flock (in the text they are males), for she says “they follow the Lamb withersoever he goeth.” 85



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[1] And I beheld, and lo a lamb stood upon mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty-­four thousand, having his name, and the name of his F ­ ather, written on their foreheads. [2] And I heard a voice from heaven, as the noise of many w ­ aters, and as the voice of g­ reat thunder; and the voice which I heard, was as the voice of harpers, harping on their harps. [3] And they sung as it w ­ ere a new canticle, before the throne, and before the four living creatures, and the ancients; and no man could say the canticle, but t­hose hundred forty-­four thousand, who w ­ ere purchased from the earth. [4] Th ­ ese are they who ­were not defiled with ­women: for they are virgins. ­These follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. ­These ­were purchased from among men, the firstfruits to God and to the Lamb: [5] And in their mouth ­there was found no lie; for they are without spot before the throne of God. Justification for the vestments worn by the ­women in Hildegard’s community is found in Scivias II.v. H ­ ere Hildegard described the throng of virgins surrounding the allegorical figure of Virginity herself. Virginity is “betrothed to the Son of Almighty God, the King of all, and bore Him a noble brood, the elect choir of virgins, when she was strengthened in the peace of the Church.” 86 The dress of this noble brood has some features suggesting what the nuns wore on the Rupertsberg: “They all shine before God more brightly than the sun does on the earth . . . ​and so are adorned beautifully with the highest wisdom. Some of them have their heads veiled in white, adorned with a gold circulet; . . . ​On their foreheads is the Lamb of God, and on their necks a h ­ uman figure.” 87 Through her emphasis on the ­music made by her community in the liturgy and the description of their special vestments, it seems that Hildegard used her visions and their exegesis as guides for explaining and justifying a par­tic­u­lar way of life, of monastics consecrated to ser­v ice and to chaste lives. This way was of vital importance to the ongoing success of the Church in the salvation of souls, of the Moon in the production of stars, of the Church in the making of saints, with the virgins taking the lead.

CHAPTER 6

The Edifice of Salvation and Its Virtues

An Overview of the Edifice The first vision in Scivias Book III depicts the Fall of Satan on the first day of Creation. This, the second of two paintings accompanying this vision, shows the Godhead sucking the light out of Satan and his minions as they fall, bright stars turning to cinders (see Plate VIII and discussion in Chapter 4). The golden stream pulled out of them was then stored, saved for the ­human creatures made l­ater on Day 6. Th ­ ese creatures w ­ ere designed to reuse the light that once had been lost; then they, in their turn, lost it again. And thus began the long journey of restoration described in Scivias Book III. The third coming of the blazing cosmic brilliance created on Day 1 would illuminate a new order of angelic beings, but one not made in a g­ reat burst of energy, as in Genesis. This final order, rather, was created slowly over time, destined to gleam in perpetual light and sing eternally a­ fter a period of extreme travail and a day of judgment. The ordering of time and the very existence of the cosmos depend upon it in Hildegard’s view. Book III is her attempt to fuse the cosmic reflection of God’s power and intentions described in Books I and II with ongoing earthly action, leading to a prediction of the end of time. Hildegard opened the third and final book of Scivias with the Fall ­because the rest of the book reveals the perilous journey of Eve’s ­children through history, moving slowly t­oward regaining their redeeming light. Much of Book III is an allegory for the formation of the Church as the Body of Christ, c­ entury by c­ entury and soul by soul, a pro­cess already discussed ­earlier in Scivias and related to the sacraments in Book II. According to Hildegard the virtues w ­ ere part of the changes taking place in time as the ­people moved slowly t­oward the apocalypse. As the virtues grew brighter in history, fulfillment drew nearer, for the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament w ­ ere to be clarified and achieved by and within l­ater events, especially that g­ reat burst of understanding that came with the Incarnation. But then



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the powers of understanding would grow dim again. At the close of Book III the journey of humankind is complete, with major consequences for the cosmos. ­After recapping the Fall of Satan in Scivias III.i, Hildegard introduced the Edifice of Salvation in Scivias III.ii, an allegorical walled and turreted courtyard, mea­sured in cubits in ways that call up the description of Solomon’s t­ emple in the Bible.1 In addition to Solomon’s ­temple the Edifice has been compared by scholars to the Heavenly Jerusalem, to Ezechiel’s vision of the t­ emple (Ezek. 40:3–42), and to other maps and plans by Hildegard’s contemporaries, especially ­t hose of Honorius Augustodunensis and Hugh of St.-­Victor.2 Conrad Rudolph’s description of Hugh’s Mystical Ark of Noah conjures up Hildegard’s Edifice of Salvation as well. I argued e­ arlier that Hildegard may have known Hugh’s writings (especially the De sacramentis Christianae fidei) and, in a sense, was responding to some of their ideas in her Scivias. The artistic display that Rudolph believes accompanied Hugh’s lectures on this subject does not survive, but he has reconstructed it from Hugh’s descriptions of it. It is city, Church, and cosmos, all three, and so has features of Hildegard’s allegorical structures as well: “The image described in the text of The Mystic Ark depicts the Ark of the Flood coterminous with the world, positioned in the centre of the cosmos. All of this is enclosed by Christ with his arms, with the nine choirs of angels on ­either side and with the six days of creation understood as proceeding from his mouth. ­There are hundreds of figures, symbols, and inscriptions operating in this painting, so many that it would be impossible to describe all of them and their interrelations even briefly h ­ ere, to say nothing of discussing their significance.”3 The extent to which the architectural construct Hildegard designed for Scivias III also relates to Augustine’s City of God has never been worked out in detail by theologians.4 Notes to the critical edition of Scivias cite but a handful of pos­si­ble allusions to Augustine’s treatise. Yet a basic reliance on Augustine’s work in Hildegard’s creation of her structure, one that embodies a journey through time to salvation at the end of time, cannot be denied. Hildegard’s Edifice is not a city, but it is golden and glorious, and in several places in Scivias III Hildegard brings awareness of the world outside of it. But although ­t here is an understanding of the City of God that is foundational to the Edifice of Salvation found in Scivias III, Hildegard’s Edifice is quite dif­fer­ent in nature from the two cities laid out by Augustine. Peter Dronke says: “While Hildegard assimilated Augustine’s characterizations of the heavenly city, and also his notion that this city can be in some mea­sure pre­sent in the earthly, h ­ ere and now, she tried her utmost to overcome the dualism latent in Augustine’s conception. For Hildegard, t­ here is no such t­ hing as an evil, godless city. What Augustine describes as Babylon, terrena civitas, is for

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Hildegard nothing more than signs of where the building of the one true city has not, or not yet, succeeded.”5 The duality Hildegard described in the cosmos is mixed and mingled in her allegories of history and of life on Earth. Hildegard’s allegorical architecture incorporates meanings assigned to vari­ous dimensions of the Edifice, relating it to the Earth, to the cosmos, and to time through an elaborate number symbolism. The number 4 defines many aspects of the model: four corners of the earth, four categories of ­people, four corners of the structure, the four ele­ments, the four walls of the complex. Each of the four corners relates to a par­ tic­u­lar historical development: the southern corner recalls Adam and his immediate heirs; the eastern corner Noah, “in whom justice began to show itself”; the northern corner Abraham and Moses, who brought the rite of circumcision and the Law; and lastly the western corner, that of the Trinity, which “showed itself when the Savior was baptized” (Scivias III.ii.7, 328).6 This motion of time works upward from the right to the left, beginning in the south, proceeding to the east, to the north, and lastly to the west at the bottom of the structure, where the pillar of the Trinity is located. The four corners also relate to t­hese same four categories of p ­ eople: (1) the race of Adam; (2) the coming of Noah; (3) Abraham and Moses bringing the rite of circumcision and the Law; and (4) the time of the Trinity, “when the Old Testament was openly fulfilled in the Son of God” (Scivias III.ii.4, p. 327). And then numbers relate as well to the end of time: “And so starting with Abel, Man began to practice all the virtues, and w ­ ill continue to perfect them u ­ ntil the day of the last just person; and this is why the length of the building is the number one hundred” (Scivias III. ii.19, p. 335). In the midst of this fourfold conceit are two other impor­tant numbers: 10 and 5. The number 10 is emphasized h ­ ere and elsewhere through references to the parable of the ten talents, one of the most impor­tant passages of Scripture under­ lying Scivias (Luke 15:8–9), with humankind as the replacement for the tenth order of angels (Scivias III.ii.19). The number 5 too has its place linking the five wounds of Christ to the five senses of ­human beings (Scivias III.ii.21–22). The Edifice with its walls, pillars, and towers mea­sured in mystical cubits has multiple levels of meaning relating to e­ arlier paintings and themes found in Scivias. In addition to providing a history of salvation for the ­people of God, it also can be superimposed onto Hildegard’s Cosmic Egg (Scivias I.iii), and so the journey is situated in the natu­ral world described in Scivias I. Accordingly, motion within it has deep consequences for the workings of the universe. The ways in which diagrams of the cosmos, the tradition of the mappa mundi, and plans of Jerusalem and the heavenly city ­were fused in this period are discussed by Jay Rubenstein, using illustrations from the tradition of the Liber floridus.7



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Hildegard’s Edifice also may represent the map or plan of a monastery, and so be related to the pilgrimages of monastic communities situated in their own deserts, with their rules as guides.8 It also conjures up ideas of a church building, with the altar in the east, where Christ is found, the darkest section in the north, and the west in a Trinitarian guise, as was often the case with twelfth-­century church portals.9 Dethard von Winterfeld’s essay on the monastic complexes in which Hildegard lived provides drawings from the late eigh­teenth ­century that offer understandings of the church building on the Rupertsberg. A drawing of the church shows the apse as flanked by two square towers, and a nave of eight pillars with aisles on e­ ither side, and the choir with its grill occupying the first three sections of the nave.10 The spaces for eight win­dows on e­ ither side can be seen in the upper story. The large arcaded cloister was on the south side of the church and connected to it through a chapel. Th ­ ere w ­ ere also stairs ­going into the tower on the south side. The lives of Hildegard’s community w ­ ere filled with the kinds of spaces found in the Edifice, and by staffing them with hosts of virtues, Hildegard offered her community a rich palette of goodness. And so, of course, the Edifice provided a plan for each individual soul: with the virtues’ encouragement, persons attempting to achieve sainthood must find their own ways through tangled snares obstructing the path to sanctity. Through this design, Hildegard interrelated vari­ous journeys through the exhausting, multifold rounds that must be made to reach the east of the edifice. It is a maze, one of g­ reat consequence, and staffed by virtues, ideas that reign within the mind of God, helpmates for the symbolic plan offering multiple paths to salvation.11 Ideas about the monastic life had their challenges too, and round any corner Satan might be waiting, breathing poisonous fumes of temptation and denial. When the precise but unfathomable number of saints reached the top of the Edifice, the turning of the cosmos and duration of time would cease (­these the subjects of Scivias III.xii and Scivias III.xiii). The cosmic journey of the Christian ­people within the Edifice of Salvation is studied ­here in Chapter 6; the par­tic­u­lar pilgrimage of Hildegard’s own community and of individual souls within such a community, especially as found in the notated Ordo virtutum, is treated in Chapters 7 and 8. But the larger journey and the pilgrimage described in the notated play ­were closely and deliberately interrelated, inhabited the same allegorical spaces, and relate to Hildegard’s understanding of the sacraments, especially as described in Scivias II. Her sounding, dramatic reenactment is a distinct feature of Hildegard’s thought. All the universe for her becomes an allegory of a time and the h ­ uman journey, and, as has been noted before (see Chapter 5), the allegories

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themselves are dynamic calls to change and transformation, unfolding as they do over the spaces of many aspects of Scivias.

Scivias III.ii: The Nature of the Journey The painting for Scivias III.ii offers an overview of the entire Edifice with its walls, its several way stations, and its many twists, turns, and vari­ous heights (see Plate XI). As the east in medieval maps was at the top, ­here Christ, the Sun, sits in the east of the diagram, reigning as in Hildegard’s map of the cosmos, Scivias I.iii (see Plate IX). His body is not completely vis­i­ble in this painting: the plan is not yet fulfilled. His presence parallels the ways the light of the sun is not yet constant in the map of the cosmos found in Scivias I.iii but ebbs and flows; so too does the light illuminating the ele­ments of the Eucharistic sacrifice described in Scivias II.vi. All three characters of the light are interrelated. Christ offers a blessing, yes, but t­ here are spaces depicted in his lower limbs where he joins the diagram at its apex, the reigning cornerstone.12 Scivias Book III describes the way stations and walls with their features, often with a par­tic­u­lar set of virtues to encourage the qualities of understanding necessary for advancement through events that are fulfillments of time. Hildegard took the reader on a journey around the Edifice beginning with the Tower of the Anticipation of God’s ­Will to the viewer’s upper left, and circling counterclockwise, up to the final goal, the Son of Man, who awaits in the eastern corner. But this is not a straightforward trip with a precise chronology; rather, time is mixed and referenced in dif­fer­ent ways in each of the allegorical areas or stopping points. Clearly t­here was a large-­scale plan under­lying the entire work to make the many interrelationships between the paintings pos­si­ble, and one that would have taken much time and effort to design. The paintings accompanying Book III offer perhaps the best example of this characteristic of Hildegard’s work as a w ­ hole: the Edifice of Salvation is first presented in its entirety in Scivias III.ii, and then in subsequent visions of Book III t­here are zoom-­ins on e­ very major aspect of the structure and discussions of the par­tic­u­lar virtues aiding the travelers as they move through en route to the top. Th ­ ese chapters not only provide close-­ups but also pre­sent dif­f er­ent a­ ngles in some instances, and always offer far greater amounts of detail than is found in the painting of the ­whole. Hildegard could see the actions and the inhabitants of the vari­ous walls and stations—­both virtues and ­people—­and had an overriding model in her mind (and doubtless in her sketches, what­ever their nature may have been).



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A power­ful visual understanding sustains the ­whole treatise and the complete set of images, enough so that Hildegard could detach its parts and keep to the sense of the entirety as she worked. As a result, she was also able to situate the scenes of the sung play Ordo virtutum within the architecture of this mystical edifice, suggesting that the sung play and the treatise w ­ ere created si­mul­ta­neously, so carefully have they been interrelated, yet also kept distinct by genre, design, and purpose. B ­ ecause of the Edifice and its deliberate design, she was able to situate her liturgical ­music within the structure and its cosmic and temporal dimensions as well, creating a kind of sacramental interplay between Scivias, the paintings, the play, and her lyr­ics. As long as she composed liturgical m ­ usic throughout the rest of her life, she still had the Edifice to sustain her ideas and to inform her ­later writings as well. Sometimes, in her letters, she looked into the plan and positioned the ­people she was addressing within it, strengthening her prophetic gifts. The stations and walls within the Edifice of Salvation are described in this order in the chapters of Scivias III: Scivias III.ii: Overview Scivias III.iii: The Tower of the Anticipation of God’s ­Will (northeast) Scivias III.iv: The Pillar of the Word of God (northeast) Scivias III.v: The Jealousy of God (north) Scivias III.vi: The Stone Wall of the Old Law (northwest) Scivias III.vii: The Pillar of the Trinity (west) Scivias III.viii: The Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior (southwest) Scivias III.ix: The Tower of the Church (southwest) Scivias III.x: The Eastern Corner: The Son of Man (east) Scivias III (iii–­x) explicates the Edifice scene by scene as the reader travels from the viewer’s left on the diagram, continues down and around, and then makes a full circle to Christ enthroned at the top, the east.13 But it is clear too that the directionality of the journey is complex and that figures in one location look across to ­others, and so are in relationships with what is opposite as well as what is nearby. Hildegard summed up the meaning of the entire structure at the close of Scivias III.x, clarifying the cosmic themes and showing that indeed the Edifice of Salvation, depicted wholly in III.ii, and part by part in III.iii–­x, has a sense of direction and a description of components that can also be imposed upon the Cosmic Egg of Scivias I.iii. This overview is not only an introduction to the meanings of the ­whole of the treatise but also prepares the reader for the ending of Book III, which

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includes the texts of the fourteen Scivias chants as well as the text of the playlet, the Exhortatio virginum, a truncated version of the Ordo virtutum.14 “And so, as has been shown, God works from the east to the north to the west to the south, and brings to that consummation which is the last day, for love of the Church in His Son, all that was predestined before the creation of the world. He produces His work through Himself, and draws it back to Himself confirmed and adorned and completed in the highest perfection. And this is mystically symbolized by the aforesaid towers and virtues.”15 In this summary all that happens leading to the consummation of the Church “was predestined before the creation of the world,” an idea Hildegard knew from her study of philosophy and theology and that she expressed in several of her lyr­ics, including the responsory “O uis eternitatis”: “O strength of eternity, you ordained all ­t hings in your heart. By your Word all t­ hings ­were created as you willed.”16 She says further on that God’s justice began with Adam, who was cast out of “the flowering land.”17 This justice then worked its ways through Noah to Abraham and Moses, and fi­nally was “perfected in the Son of God, through whom all the signs and marvels of the Old Law w ­ ere publicly fulfilled.” This summation also introduces the virtues, who are the leading characters both of Scivias III and of the plays OV and EV.18 Hildegard says of t­ hese characters that through Christ “all the virtues, which ­will adorn the heavenly Jerusalem in her ­children, are declared in the regeneration of the Spirit and ­water.” Th ­ ese characters are met in nearly e­ very way station, and their workings are crucial for understanding the Edifice of Salvation. They both extol and explain, and they have their own places of dwelling but also may be related to the workings of o ­ thers. The entire structure is dynamic, alive with many directions, ideas, and forces for good and for ill. Life is a set of challenges for e­ very Christian, but t­ here are grace-­fi lled helpmates too. The Edifice of Scivias III.ii has been painted from a perspective that allows for seeing within it: it is a model laid out flat. It is also pos­si­ble to imagine taking up all its sides and raising them upward. To do this, then, would cause all the walls and towers to be upright, creating a structure with a courtyard in the center. It would then make sense that p ­ eople are called to come into it through par­tic­u­lar doors and are expelled through ­others when they fall. This is the holy city of God, apart from the world, and yet constantly assaulted by it, especially from the direction of the north. The paintings offering details in the chapters of Scivias III to follow also show ­t hese vari­ous perspectives and, taken together, can help in understanding the w ­ hole. Virtues stand on the pavement in front of vari­ous parts of the structure; they are inside it too, and also arrayed in arches and in other parts, and Hildegard tried to explain this visually, while keeping the entire building in



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her mind as well. Like the mountain described in Chapter 3, the Edifice is a ­grand proving ground for souls.

Who and What Are the Virtues? Throughout the Edifice, the virtues are pre­sent, in most cases speaking and offering explanations of the parts and of the ­whole and actions within it and within the history of salvation.19 In her characterization of the virtues and their ways of working, Hildegard was drawing upon a long-­standing tradition, beginning with the second-­century Shepherd of Hermas.20 The Shepherd of Hermas was originally written in Greek, although it survives w ­ hole only in Latin. Only twenty copies ­were made of it in the ­Middle Ages, and most of them date from a­ fter Hildegard’s lifetime; it is a testimony to her research that she located a copy of the treatise, found the time to study it, and incorporated it deeply within her first major work.21 The narrator of the treatise is a former slave living in Rome who has a series of five visions, followed by twelve commandments and ten parables.22 In vision 5 the Shepherd, an angelic guide for Hermas, helps him comprehend what he sees in all that follows. This book of instruction deals with the prob­lems of sin and penance in Christian life. The challenge is to keep green the branches Christians have been given from the tree that represents God’s law (see parable 8.6:72).23 The Shepherd demonstrates the ways in which ­people can become “living stones,” part of the edifice of the church, a building u ­ nder construction (for which see especially vision 4 and parable 9), awaiting finality through the coming of Christ: “And so the stones of vari­ous colors w ­ ere brought from the mountains, hewn by men and given over to the virgins. The virgins carried them through the gate and gave them over for the building of the tower. When the vari­ous stones ­were placed in the building, they changed their former colors and all alike became white.”24 The virgins in The Shepherd of Hermas are dressed in allegorical costumes, some of which gleam with gems (also an essential feature of several of Hildegard’s costumes), bearing the names of vari­ous virtues. They stand against the vices and aid in building the allegorical tower through inspiring penance and helping t­ hose they serve to keep their spirits w ­ hole and clean, like a garment (parable 9.32:109, p. 463). The names of the virtues found in The Shepherd do not correspond directly to t­ hose found in Scivias; nor do t­ hose of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, which Hildegard prob­ably knew, and which was both illuminated and glossed throughout the M ­ iddle Ages.25 Rather, several of the virtues found in the Rule of St. Benedict, the Rule by which Hildegard and her community lived, are featured in the

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play Ordo virtutum, tying it to the monastic way of life (see further discussion in Chapter 7).26 The influence of t­ hese works on Scivias, especially that of The Shepherd, is through themes and ideas rather than direct quotation, as is typical of the ways that Hildegard used her source materials, but the parallels cannot be denied. ­There are several other writings Hildegard knew that seem to have influenced her understanding of the virtues and how they work as forces for good within the soul as expressed in Scivias III.27 The Carolingian scholar Rabanus Maurus was from nearby Mainz and became archbishop t­ here in the ninth c­ entury: copies of his works w ­ ere kept in local libraries. His definition of the angelic order called Virtues is as found in the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Book VII, cap. v: “Angelic Virtues are named as the specific ministers through which signs and miracles are made in the world, and b ­ ecause of this they are called Virtues” (Virtutes angelicae quaedam ministeria perhibentur, per quos signa et miracula in mundo fiunt; propter quod et Virtutes dicuntur).28 Rabanus’s De universo, which Hildegard very likely would have read, was illustrated beginning in the ninth ­century.29 I suggested in Chapter  2 that Hildegard may well have known the Speculum virginum (SV), a treatise prob­ably by Conrad of Hirsau, written around 1140 for the education of nuns (see also Chapter 7).30 Hildegard’s own establishment was part of the sphere of monasteries ­under the sway of Hirsau, as was the Disibodenberg, where she was raised.31 In early copies, the SV contained m ­ usic, and Hildegard may have seen a notated version as the two earliest copies of this treatise w ­ ere made in monasteries in the Rhineland, one at a monastery with which Hildegard had close contact.32 The g­ reat number of virtues presented by the male instructor to a nun in the SV is or­ga­nized into groups for learning, study, and spiritual guidance, and each is paired with the vice over which it may conquer if rightly applied.33 I have distinguished in recent publications between the Virtues, an angelic order, and the virtues, the ideas allegorized by Hildegard and ­others, through capitalizing the angelic order, as ­t hese are living beings, and lowercasing “virtues,” a practice followed ­here as well.34 Hildegard, surely knowing the second-­century Shepherd of Hermas, and also perhaps the fifth-­century Psychomachia of Prudentius and the twelfth-­century Speculum Virginum, then made something completely her own. She brought the strug­gle to life in both the treatise Scivias and in her dramatic works by creating allegorical characters and giving them ­music to sing in interaction one with the other, and then also situating this par­tic­u­lar vision of the strife between good and evil within the allegorical architecture found in Scivias III. Hers is an extraordinary achievement, one that can only be fully appreciated by accounting for its several dimensions, first within Scivias III with its Edifice of Salvation and through her notated play, the Ordo virtutum, discussed in Chapters 7 and 8.



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Throughout vari­ous journeys taken around, in, and through the Edifice of Salvation, the virtues are pre­sent in their many guises, aiding and abetting the ­people on their long and difficult pilgrimages, ever taunted and distracted by their serpentine adversary and his minions. In more ways than one, their motion proves not only Hildegard’s knowledge of The Shepherd of Hermas but also her admiration of it. Two virtues predominate in the introduction to the Edifice of Salvation found in Scivias III.ii: Faith (a shining light) and Fear of the Lord (stones joined together), ­these constituting the allegorical materials that surround and sustain the entire complex: “­These two materials met at the east and north corners, so that the shining part of the wall went uninterruptedly from the east corner to the north corner, and the stone part went from the north corner around the west and south corners and ended in the east” (Scivias III.ii.preface, 325). The painting for Scivias III.ii (Plate XI) realizes ­these characteristics. At the east corner in the top of painting the shining wall is to the left of the apex and the stone wall to the right; at the north corner, the shining part is to the right of the Jealousy of God and the stone part to its left. Then the stone wall continues on down and around from the north on the left of the diagram all the way around to the apex. But, as can be seen, the color of the shining wall is picked up again on the southwest side in the Tower of the Church demonstrating that its material continues. The two materials—­Fear of the Lord and Faith—­ make the surrounding of the Edifice of Salvation and are found in the ­people of the Old Testament and of the Gospels, joining them in fundamental ways. The state of Faith demonstrates how the virtues work in Hildegard’s allegorical universe as depicted ­here, for this virtue appeared “faintly” in the saints of the Old Testament. But at the Incarnation, Faith “burst into burning light by the open manifestation of ardent deeds” (Scivias III.ii.1, 325). Ritual ­matters too: Faith first appeared in the circumcision of Abraham, offering the promise of ­things to come. Fear of the Lord and Faith are interconnected: good intentions begin with Fear and then flower into Faith (Scivias III.ii.2). Th ­ ese two show up again in more specific guises in the Edifice, but they are also able to permeate the entire structure, as can be seen in the painting for Scivias III.ii. Other virtues operate in more par­tic­u­lar ways, as can be seen by taking a trip around the ­whole, quadrant by quadrant.

Guides to the Edifice: Virtues in the Northeast Quadrant In general the walls and way stations of the Edifice promote a historical chronology: they begin with Anticipation and end, area by area, with the consummation of time in the east. But this order is subverted in many ways. Most significantly, Adam

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and his race begin in the south corner, and then Noah subsequently is found up in the east where Christ sits enthroned, and Abraham and Moses in the north, and the Trinity in the west, a quality of motion operating in the opposite direction from that of the journey undertaken in Scivias III.iii–­x. And not only this, but the directions in which a par­tic­u­lar tower or pillar face are also impor­tant, offering other considerations for advancing meaning. All this being said, Hildegard did decide to construct her argument in a par­tic­u­lar way in Scivias III, beginning with the parts of the Edifice located in the northeast of the diagram and circling down, around, and up to the east. The reader is to learn about the history of salvation from this quality of motion, even though it is not the only pos­si­ble way to move through the structure. It is recommended to follow the arguments by looking at the plan of the Edifice as found associated with Scivias III.ii (Plate XI), a model for contemplation and for organ­izing the many allegories offered for each component. Scivias III.iii describes the first way station in the Edifice of Salvation, the Tower of the Anticipation of God’s ­Will. The introduction to the vision describes how the truths found in the First Testament w ­ ere known imperfectly and served to foreshadow the full truths revealed in the Second Testament. “By the strength and constancy of God’s ­will, the divine virtues sprang up gradually in the Old Testament; but to ­t hose who revered them almost in ignorance, they did not yet taste completely sweet and delightful.”35 This tower and the several virtues who support actions within it are related to the meanings of the Old Testament rite of Circumcision, which, as Hildegard explained, was a foreshadowing of the Christian rite of baptism: “O Abraham, you are encircled with circumcision, you are walled round by the ancient covenant, and you are adorned with the dawn of the Church’s sun. I gave circumcision to you and your race u ­ ntil the coming of My Son, who openly forgave the sins of humanity; but with Him the physical circumcision of the flesh of the foreskin came to an end, and in the sanctification of the washing of My Son, the true font of baptism poured forth.”36 So it is that Abraham also appears in Hildegard’s discussion of this first tower as the faithful man in whom the mystery of the Circumcision arose, the anticipation of the salvific fountains to come (Scivias III.iii.1). The five virtues featured in this tower—­Celestial Love, Discipline, Modesty, Mercy, and Victory—­stand “in the likeness of a person’s five senses” (Scivias III.iii.3), and they look to other places in the Edifice of Salvation for their definitions. Throughout discussion of ­these five virtues, the figure of Abraham appears not only for the sake of his foundation of the rite of Circumcision but also through his foreshadowing of Christ in the story of Isaac, as the ram caught in the thicket, who was taken up as a sacrifice (Scivias III.iii.3), and the virtue of mercy shown to him in the sparing of his son (Scivias III.iii.8).



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The virtues in the Tower of Anticipation found in Scivias III.iii are defined by the directions in which they face. All of them are virtues belonging to two worlds, that of the Old Testament and the New, and related to the Circumcision, the anticipatory rite that dominates in this part of the Edifice. All five virtues anticipate in their actions fulfillment in other parts of the structure: Celestial Love f­ aces the east and sobs with love for the Son of God; Discipline looks to the northeast for she reveres God in the east but disdains the sinful p ­ eople of the north; Modesty ­faces north, for, shielded by the Law, she wars against fornication; Mercy looks ­toward the Pillar of the Word of God, with Abraham seated at its foot, and holds fast to the Incarnation of the Son of God, through Abraham’s beginning; and Victory ­faces the Tower of the Church, which is in the southeast, destroying “­every injustice that originated in Adam.” As can be seen from the state of the virtues found in this part of the Edifice, all are anticipatory by location but revelatory and fulfilling by direction and gaze. Motion through the Edifice is constantly driven by the prophetic and by understanding inner meanings. Hildegard has designed a structure that links the Law and the beginning of the journey of God’s ­people and the Incarnation as revealed in the Gospel as the longed-­for but open-­ended conclusion. Hildegard’s design and description h ­ ere and throughout the Edifice and actions within it demonstrate a twelfth-­century Christian theologian’s supersessionist views of history and time. In Hildegard’s theology ­there are many “good” Jews: t­ hose who foreshadow the truth of the Chris­ tian­ity to come and then w ­ ill join it at some period in salvation history. Many of the ideas sustaining Hildegard’s work are commonplace for her time; the ways she expresses them are not. The next way station in the northeastern quadrant of the Edifice of Salvation is the Pillar of the Word of God, described in Scivias III.iv, a three-­sided structure (Figure 6.1). One edge of the pillar ­faces east, with branches growing from its root to its top and Abraham seated at its bottom, and patriarchs and prophets arrayed in the branches above him. In the edge facing north, ­there is a bright light that features apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and other saints, the group that Hildegard features in other chapters of Scivias and the categories of characters listed in the Feast of All Saints. The third edge f­ aces south and is drawn like a bow ready to shoot and with differing thicknesses in its shape. Crowning the w ­ hole is a brilliant and indescribable light in the midst of which appears a dove, with a ray of gold in its mouth, an allusion to the dove that returned to Noah. On the pavement in the front of the pillar and facing it stands the virtue Knowledge of God, surrounded by a crowd of angels and of ­people who are listening to her. She cries out: “Consider the garment you have put on, and do not forget your Creator who made you” (Scivias III.iv.preface, 358).

Fig. 6.1. Pillar of the Word of God. Scivias III.iv, from W, fol. 145v.



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When Hildegard designed her Cosmic Egg, she assigned to the planets Venus and Mercury the meanings of the Old and New Testaments, sustaining the Church (Scivias I.iii.11). H ­ ere too, the two testaments work in consort to inform and sustain the p ­ eople, and adding to their power is the preaching and interpretation of the learned, with the crowning golden dove of the Spirit on top of the pillar informing their understandings: The first edge f­aces the East, which signifies the start of the knowledge of God though the divine Law, before the perfect day of justice. The second looks to the North, for a­ fter this good and chosen work was started t­ here came the gospel of My Son and the other precepts of Me, the F ­ ather, which ­rose up against the North where injustice originated. And the third f­aces the South, and is somewhat merged with the outside wall of the building. This is to say that when the works of justice had been confirmed, ­there came the profound and rich wisdom of the principal doctors, who through the fire of the Holy Spirit made known what was obscure in the Law and the prophets, and showed their fruition in the Gospels.37 The virtue Knowledge of God provides a sense of Hildegard’s ideas about preaching and about the leadership of a community, perhaps thinking of herself as a person who must explain and extol each member in ways suited to the task and to what an individual can bear. Knowledge of God is both “terrible with the terror of the avenging lightening, and gentle with the goodness of the bright sun” (Scivias III.iv.15, 364) (Figure 6.2). The angels surrounding her worship with a pure praise not pos­si­ble for ­humans, and the ­humans who come to her live in fear of judgment and are corrected by Knowledge of God, depending on what is best to bring them along the path of salvation. The groups of ­people found in this description of knowledge relate as well to t­ hose communicants met in Scivias II.vi, each with its own set of ills found at the moment of confronting God at the communion t­able. The impor­tant role of the virtue Knowledge of God in the Ordo virtutum finds its context h ­ ere in Scivias III.iv as well.

Virtues in the Northwest Quadrant The Jealousy of God, with its red face and three wings, looks outward in the northernmost point of the Edifice (Scivias III.v). From t­ here it is ready to strike at vari­ous kinds of unbelief and to warn believers as well against the Devil, who inhabits the

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Fig. 6.2. Knowledge of God. Scivias III.iv, from W, fol. 146r.

north in this scenario as well as in Hildegard’s plan of the cosmos. No virtues are depicted in the stark view of this northern guardian, but several are mentioned and three are interrelated: Justice, Fear of the Lord, and lastly Compunction.38 Jealousy of God is located at one of the places where the shining wall and the stone wall intersect. The stone wall that proj­ects downward from the north t­ oward the west of the Edifice is of three layers and heavi­ly populated with virtues, the subjects of Scivias III.vi, the painting emphasizing their multidirectionality (Figure 6.3). The viewer hardly knows which way to hold the work, and so has to be constantly rotating the image to view the virtues and the scrolls they hold. It is, however, implanted within the Edifice as depicted in Scivias III.ii, and the rightmost side of this wall abuts the pillar of the Trinity, which governs the westernmost part of the structure. Identification is a parlor game that can be played matching costumes and scrolls to characters standing amid the layers in this part of the stone wall. One can only imagine the power­f ul meditations pondering ­t hese images offered to Hildegard’s community, who surely knew them well, perhaps having roles in helping Hildegard produce her designs. The virtues in Scivias III.vi, fol. 161v (Figure 6.3) are in the following order: 1. Upper right, on the pavement, moving top to bottom Liberality Abstinence

Fig. 6.3. The ­Triple Wall. Scivias III.vi, from W, fol. 161v.

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Piety Peace Truth Beatitude 2. Discretion: lower right, looking t­ oward the Trinity 3. Salvation: lower left, shown at work shaking dust from her garment The virtues in this part of the Edifice continue the saga of the Old Testament and the New Testament and the long trip of the Judeo-­Christian p ­ eople through their histories to the end of time. The p ­ eople are or­ga­nized in arches, representing t­ hose who are concerned with the ­t hings of this earth and t­ hose concerned with heaven, and each of ­t hese categories is subdivided as well. True reformer that she is, Hildegard uses this vision to promote her ideal of a good and just Christian officeholder, most prob­ably a bishop. H ­ ere she speaks with the voice of the Living Light: “­There are ­those who have compunction and well-­searched hearts and mature minds, and all ­else that is good to Me. They have good consciences, so that they do not seek office wickedly by conflict, or try to obtain it by dev­ilish arts, or buy it with money or with secular power, or seek it for the sake of fleeting words of ­human praise. Rather, they receive it in humility by My true choice and the election of the ­people, and t­ hese are my most dear and proved guardians, and surest friends.”39 The six virtues in the upper part of the painting are all facing off with Satan in the north, each with a dif­fer­ent way of rebuffing him. The virtue Salvation in the lower left is shaking off the Old Testament and cloaking herself with the New. And the virtue Discretion is carefully positioned to be in relationship with the pillar of the Trinity, in the far west at the bottom, establishing the connection to it through her many attributes. Discretion imitates Christ, existing in two states, the divine and the ­human (Scivias III.vi.34, 405). This “wise sifter of all ­t hings” (ibid.) moves around through the p ­ eople and “contemplates her work in h ­ umans through the gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Scivias III.vi.34, 406). The small branch that Discretion holds has a threefold sprouting that represents the ways the Holy Trinity blossoms in diversity and in unity. And in her bosom is a set of jewels that she counts and recounts “as a merchant looks over his goods,” reminding the faithful of their eventual just desserts (ibid.). As both salvation and discretion point directly ­toward the Trinity, it is manifested immediately a­ fter them in the far west, represented as a pillar with three sides. The dimensions of the pillar named Trinity are vast, stretching through the ­whole of the earth, which it governs. Its sharp edges cut off unbelievers and leave them in piles around its base. The idea that it commands belief and yet is a mys-

Plate I. The Sacrament of Communion. Scivias II.vi, from E, fol. 86r.

Plate II. Hildegard and Volmar. Scivias, preface, from E, fol. 1r, col. A, detail.

Plate III. The One Enthroned. Scivias I.i, from E, fol. 2r, col. B, detail.

Plate IV. Astronomer Keith Davis, Director of Notre Dame’s Visual Digitalization Theater, re­created the night sky as it was on the eve of November  1, 1112, the feast of All Saints, the day of Hildegard’s consecration as a nun. The moon she saw that night was a gibbous moon, in-­between half and full. This is also the phase of the moon ­Hildegard designed for the Cosmic Egg (top, detail of Plate IX).

Plate V. The Trinity in the Unity. Scivias, II.ii, from E, fol. 47r.

Plate VI. The Trinity, Rothschild Canticles. New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 404, fol. 100r.

Plate VII. Creation and Redemption. Scivias II.i, from E, fol. 41v.

Plate VIII. The Fall of Lucifer and His Minions. Scivias III.1, from E, fol. 123r.

Plate IX. The Cosmic Egg. Scivias I.iii, from E, fol. 14r.

Plate X. The Rupertsberg antependium, early thirteenth ­century. Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire.

Plate XI. The Edifice of Salvation. Scivias III.ii, from E, fol. 130v.

Plate  XII. Initial of “Adspiciens” for Advent; leaf from an antiphoner, ca. 1140–60. Cleveland Museum of Art, MS 1949.202.

Plate XIII. The Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior. Scivias III.viii, from E, fol. 178r.

Plate XIV. The Symphony of the Blessed. Scivias III.xiii, from E, fol. 229r.

Plate XV. The Son of Man. Scivias III.x, from E, fol. 203v.

Plate XVI. The End of Time. Scivias III.xii, from E, fol. 225r.



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tery is not explained by virtues, who do not appear in Scivias III.vii. Rather, the Trinity is expressed through similes, meta­phors, and passages from Scripture, especially with a long discussion of 1 John 5:6–8, which leads to Hildegard’s favored theme, the Incarnation (III.vii.8), and points to the next way stations up in the southwestern quadrant.

Virtues in the Southwest of the Edifice The southwest quadrant of the Edifice of Salvation is the seat of industry regarding the saving of souls: ­here is where the dramatic action takes place as a result of the learning and warnings that are offered across the way. This quadrant is not only about gazing and defining and representing, the primary activities of many virtues found in other locations. It is about work. Th ­ ere are two structures h ­ ere: the Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior and the Tower of the Church, and both are characterized by ladders on which virtues in the former and ­people in the latter are coming and g­ oing. Th ­ ese two parts of the structure constitute a kind of team, joined by the stone wall, which is only one cubit in length between them and only one layer tall, as this part of the wall is a construction zone, with much to be built. The Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior is a major location for the work of the Ordo virtutum, and ­will be discussed in detail in Chapter 7, especially as it relates to the Tower of Anticipation in the quadrant across from it in the Edifice. The Tower of the Church is governed by two sets of figures, ­human and allegorical: (1) Doctors of the Church and Apostles and (2) a group of virtues: Wisdom, Justice, Fortitude, and Sanctity (Figure 6.4). ­These work with several groups of striving ­people who advance upward, move down, and then recommence, whose pro­gress is determined by the ac­cep­tance of their garment, ostensibly that white robe presented at baptism. As she is elsewhere in the Edifice, ­here too Knowledge of God is pre­sent, encouraging ­people to keep clothed in their symbolic and shining robes. Entrance to the Tower of the Church relies on success in two other parts of the Edifice of Salvation: the Tower of Anticipation (Scivias III.iii) and the Pillar of the Word of God (Scivias III.iv), across the courtyard in the northeast quadrant. A quotation below from the preface to Scivias III.ix is testimony to Hildegard’s work relating dif­fer­ent parts of the Edifice, showing that success in one location can lead to triumph in another, and that the situation is far from static. The description sounds with words that ­will apply to Anima, the chief character of the Ordo virtutum: “And then, to the north of the building, I saw the world and the ­people who descended from Adam ­going to and fro between the building’s

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Fig. 6.4. The Tower of the Church. Scivias III.ix, from W, fol. 192r.

shining wall of reflective knowledge and the circumference of the circle that surrounded the One seated on the throne. Many of t­ hese p ­ eople went into the building, between the tower of the anticipation of God’s ­will and the pillar of the divinity of his Word, entering and leaving through the wall of reflective knowledge like clouds, which are diffused ­here and ­t here. And each one who entered the building was clothed in a white garment. Some of them rejoiced . . . ​­others seemed both­ered by its weight.” 40 The Tower of the Church ­rose up at the Incarnation and is illumined by Christ (Scivias III.ix.7 and 8). According to Hildegard the Church moves t­oward a state of completion, but no one knows the time when this w ­ ill occur (Scivias III.ix.11). Hildegard uses this part of her treatise once again to speak in the words of a reformer, castigating church officials who sin in a variety of ways, citing especially simony (Scivias III.ix.20). The virtues who serve the Apostles in the Tower of the Church are pleading as they cajole the ­people to enter the Tower and then to per-



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sist in climbing the rungs, offering consolation and support as they climb. In this tower ­t here is an emphasis on the world to come, the eternal paradise a­ fter the end of time, for this is the reward offered by the Church, and it separates the promises of the First Testament from t­ hose of the Second. Hildegard wrote a parable in this chapter for instruction concerning the idea, with focus on the work of the Apostles and their successors. ­After the Incarnation, they ­were to come forth to instruct the ­people. ­These elect who received the knowledge subsequently had minds that “glowed with the flame kindled by the glowing hearts of t­ hose touched by the fiery tongues of the Holy Spirit” (Scivias III.ix.17, 458). The charge to ­t hese elect saints, supported and instructed by the Apostles, is to ponder the t­ hings to come at the end of time: “He (the Word of God) told them to despise the world and contemplate celestial life, and not to refuse to be ­humble and poor in spirit, but to dwell in humility so as to prepare themselves for trea­sure in Heaven. And ­t hose martyrs and virgins and other self-­rejectors who did despise transitory ­t hings and worked in humility, meditating in lofty zeal on God’s wise precepts, ascended in that self-­denial to the love of heavenly ­t hings” (ibid.).

Wisdom in Text and M ­ usic One of the four virtues aiding the Apostles in the Tower of the Church is Wisdom, a complicated and multifaceted idea, brought to allegorical life ­here (see Figure 6.4). Hildegard adds to her character layer by layer throughout the chapter (as she does to the other virtues as well). Wisdom’s first speech is to the p ­ eople asking them why they are slow to come on the way, giving assurance that help w ­ ill be lavished on ­those who try (Scivias III.ix.1). Wisdom’s special relationship with the triune Godhead is the next ­t hing readers learn. She “protects and guides the ­people who want to follow her, and keeps with g­ reat love t­hose who are true to her” (Scivias III.ix.25, p. 465). She stands before the Tower of the Church, for facing it are seven pillars crowned by a dome, and ­these represent the gifts of the spirit supporting Wisdom. The colors of the gems on her garment are powerfully symbolic: green with sprouts like the patriarchs and prophets; white, like the Virgin Mary; red like the martyrs; and blue like the love of contemplation (Scivias III. ix.25). Though she works to inspire and safeguard the ­people in the Church, she has been ­doing this job since the beginning of time, God’s helpmate for all of history, proceeding in this work ­until the world w ­ ill be no more (Scivias III.ix.25, 466): “And on top of this dome you see a very beautiful figure standing. This is to say that this virtue was in the Most High F ­ ather before all creatures, giving

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counsel in the formation of all the creatures made in heaven and earth; so that she is the g­ reat ornament of God and the broad stairway of all the other virtues that live in Him, joined to Him in sweet embrace in a dance of ardent love” (Scivias III. ix.25, 465). Wisdom is one of the virtues that has a chant dedicated to its lofty powers, and this provides yet another dimension of understanding, helping to explain how the powers of virtues live in a­ ctual beings, in this case in Christ, who embodied them all in a mystical sense. This chant celebrates both Wisdom and the power or virtue of Wisdom, which is ­here a member of the Trinity, a whirling circle that vivifies all ­things on earth and above earth, the very force of creative power. This view of Wisdom is found elsewhere in Scivias, where the gifts of the Holy Spirit from Isaiah 11 are more fully described: “And so the spirit of Wisdom and understanding was in Him [Christ]; for when God created all ­t hings by His Word, ­great wisdom appeared, for it was so diffused in the Word that He was Wisdom. That Word was invisible when He was not yet incarnate, but when He was incarnate, He became vis­i­ble; the Word, Who was in the heart of the ­Father before all creatures, by Whom all ­t hings ­were made and without whom nothing was made that was made, shone forth within time as a Flower, vis­i­ble as a ­human being and offering good understanding to all ­humans by His words.” (Scivias III.viii.15, 438. ­These ideas are discussed in some detail in Chapter 7.) It is then the mystery of this virtue, this power, Hildegard celebrated in her lyric, and also had proclaimed allegorically within the Tower of the Church: 5 10

O uirtus Sapientie, que circuiens circuisti, comprehendendo omnia in una uia que habet uitam, tres alas habens, quarum una in altum uolat et altera de terra sudat et tercia undique uolat. Laus tibi sit, sicut te decet, o Sapientia.

(O energy of Wisdom, you circled, circling, encompassing all ­t hings in one path possessed of life. Three wings you have: one of them soars on high, the second exudes from the earth, and the third flutters everywhere. Praise to you, as befits you, O Wisdom!)



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Newman says of this lyric: “As creatrix, Hildegard’s Sapientia is no unmoved mover, ordering the universe from on high or even—­l ike the Creator in con­temporary paintings—­molding the nascent world in almighty hands. On the contrary, she [Wisdom] creates the cosmos by existing within it, her ubiquity expressed through the image of ceaseless or circular motion.” 41 The ­music of the lyric emphasizes the Trinitarian nature of the concept of wisdom with its cosmos-­invigorating wings. It is the creative inner force within Christ as Log­os and as the second person of the Trinity, the power that makes all t­ hings, encompasses all t­ hings, and yet is part of a threefold ­whole. Hildegard set the piece in e, exploring the upper octave above the pitch and placing cadences and other phrases often on the fifth above, the pitch bb (Example 6.1). The antiphon offers opportunities to observe how Hildegard is faithful to the words and phrases and their meanings in her use of ­music. As can be seen from the example, the piece can be divided into two main parts, which are followed by a kind of summarizing coda, labeled Section 1, Section 2, and Conclusion in the example. It is instructive to “read” the poem from the point of view of Hildegard’s musical setting, working line by line. ­Every one of Hildegard’s settings offers a distinctive ornament or cadential pattern to ground the works, which are usually modally quite ­simple, with constant emphases on the final, the fifth above it, the fourth below it, and the octave above, with leaps and runs above this pitch too for emphases. It is the interplay between text and ­music, giving rhetorical power to words and phrases and thereby creating sense structures, that defines the par­tic­u­ lar genius of Hildegard’s chant. The first line, her “O,” followed by the subject of veneration, the inner power of wisdom, outlines the scale above e, with its first resting point on the fifth above, bb. Th ­ ese are the three pitches that are ­going to define the piece as a w ­ hole, and the entire scale is presented, in a ­grand descent, with two resting points, g, and then an ornamented bb, followed by an ornamented e on the word “virtus.” This gesture is then repeated but the first half of the line only, as the descent occurs again, but stops on bb, and h ­ ere Hildegard provides a major cadential ornament, a bb followed by a pressus on the upper cc, and a return to bb. The next line of m ­ usic offers a truncated version of the first line of direct address and explains what this power of wisdom is: circling as it circles, and encompassing every­t hing. H ­ ere again the emphases of line 1 are repeated, the g that closes “circuiens,” the bb of “circuisti,” the repeated ee of “comprehendendo,” and the cadence of the line on bb; ­every word is given structure and meaning in the musical line as a ­whole. And the third line of the section reiterates the opening on “O.”

Ex. 6.1. Antiphon: “O uirtus sapientie.” R, fol. 466r.



The Edifice of Salvation and Its Virtues 181

Section 2 has a dif­fer­ent subject, the three wings of this allegorical repre­sen­ta­ tion. The first line of Section 2 uses the cadential formulas found in line 1 of Section 1. The high wing is a kind of restatement of the second half of the first line but offers a clear example of how Hildegard uses m ­ usic to embody meaning. The melodic line for the text describing the high wing shoots above the octave to gg, the only time this happens in the piece. A ­ fter this, the lower wing is set in the lower range, and the wing that flies everywhere is in the ­middle, resting for repeated notes on the pitch bb, the m ­ iddle of the octave. This line also has the same contour as that for the setting of the word “comprehendendo,” drawing t­hese meanings together. The coda restates the opening line of the piece but brings it at the end to the final of e, anchoring it with the same cadential formula to make the point. In this lyric, all creation is filled with the trinitarian power of Wisdom, expressed in both m ­ usic and in text. The rich complexities of Hildegard’s thought world come to life through explication of Wisdom: it is on the one hand a virtue depicted in the painting found accompanying Scivias III.ix, a female figure; on the other hand, it is the all-­k nowing spirit found in a celebratory lyric; and third, it is Christ, the divine manifestation of the visual and lyrical understandings. The Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior (Scivias III.viii) ­will be discussed in Chapter 8, as it provides a major location for the play Ordo virtutum.

The Eastern Point of the Edifice The Son of Man is enthroned at the apex of the Edifice, a second place where the shining wall of Faith and the stone wall of Fear intersect (Plate XV and Figure 6.5). From this vantage point, Christ implores p ­ eople to come to him: “O foolish p ­ eople! You languidly and shamefully shrink into yourselves and do not want to open an eye to see how good your souls could be . . . ​You have the power to master yourself and not want and take plea­sure in injustice; you can punish yourself and flee from the illicit lusts you delight in, and so honor My martyrdom by fighting against your burning desires and bearing my cross in your body” (Scivias III.x.1 and 2, 473). The suffering of Christ on the Cross is a call to e­ very Christian to mortify the flesh. Just as Scivias III.ix is about yearning for heaven, Scivias III.x is about fleeing from the desires of the flesh and of the world, with Christ as the model: “in this you should bear My cross and imitate My martyrdom; you should restrain yourself and conquer yourself through Me, which is always pleasing to Me. For I

Fig. 6.5. The Son of Man. Scivias III.x, from W, fol. 203v.



The Edifice of Salvation and Its Virtues 183

know you are a fragile vessel, and so I choose to share in and pity your pains. But if, ­because of ­t hose pains, you fall, rise up quickly and do penance from the heart; and I w ­ ill receive you and save you” (Scivias III.x.7). The warning to join with Christ’s martyrdom of the flesh is offered to all, including to monastics who may refuse “virginity of the spirit” although their bodies may be pure. Copper rather than true gold, ­t hese “masquerade as wise virgins, but are inwardly full of craft and unworthiness” (Scivias III.x.8, 479). Hildegard emphasizes ­here the impor­tant correspondence between the outer and the inner states of a person: they should be meshed. This emphasis was well known to monastics and is found expressed in fundamental ways in Augustine: “Let us praise the Lord, b ­ rothers, in life and tongue, in heart and mouth, in voices and be­hav­ior, . . . ​ First let the tongue agree with life, the mouth with the conscience in ourselves. Let the voices, I say, agree with be­hav­ior, so that good voices may not perchance bear witness against bad be­hav­ior.” 42 The virtues in this easternmost part of the Edifice direct their gazes t­oward the Son b ­ ecause “they desire Him and seek Him in all the faithful” (Scivias III.x.21, 484). In their midst is a hart, who pants for the living stream, as the faithful soul pants for God (Psalm 41) (Scivias III.x.110), a reference to Baptism. As Christ enthroned in the east is the Cornerstone of the Edifice, Constancy remains steadfast in this rock (Scivias III.x.10). Celestial desire, with pure heart, runs to the stream of living w ­ ater (Scivias III.x.11). Compunction of the heart gazes always on Christ (Scivias III.x.12). Contempt of the world is watered by the living stream so she blossoms (Scivias III.x.13). Concord wants only to offer continual praise, rejoicing in all the judgments of Christ (Scivias III.x.14). Scivias III.x, presenting the consummation of the entire journey, engages once again with the virtues who initiated the discussion chapters ago in Scivias III.ii: Faith and Fear of the Lord. ­Because the shining wall and the stone wall come together h ­ ere, this point is the fulfillment of time and travel, just as the virtues Faith and Fear of the Lord unite ­here in the person of the Son of Man. The seven white marble steps that lead up to him h ­ ere “rise like an arch up to the g­ reat stone on which the Shining One sits on the throne; for e­ very act that is done by the faithful in faith and work is fittingly united by God’s providence to fear of the Lord” (Scivias III.x.16, 482). Hildegard joins all the work of e­ very wall, tower, and pillar at the end of Scivias III.x, making the w ­ hole a vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem, consecrated by the Son of Man working through the Spirit in cele­bration of his saints and their fidelity. A final vision describes this triumph through the actions of a ­human arm at work, shoulder, elbow, and hand, removing the reader from the spectacular cosmic

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thrust of the entirety to the realm of the microcosmos, to the individual communities and p ­ eople to be directly depicted in Chapter 7: And the Son, born of the Virgin, fulfilled with a perfect work all ­things foretold by the Old Testament saints, inspired by the Holy Spirit. It was as when, to perform an action, first the ­human arm bends and then the hand works . . . ​when Adam, by God’s just judgment, was cast out of the flowering land, justice first began to move in Noah, like the joint of the shoulder. Then it broadened into more definite manifestations in Abraham and Moses, like the more flexible elbow joint. And fi­nally it came to perfection in the Son of God, though Whom all the signs and marvels of the old Law ­were publicly fulfilled, and through Whom all the virtues, which ­will adorn the heavenly Jerusalem in her c­ hildren, are declared in the regeneration of the Spirit and the ­water, as the hand with its fin­gers accomplishes and puts the final touches on a work. (Scivias III.x.32, 498–90) The journey is about the slow acquisition of knowledge in the history of the Judeo-­ Christian ­people, moving from a steady stream of prophets to a burst of light and understanding at the Incarnation, to a pleading for the continuation of the pro­ cess ­until time ­shall end. This pleading comes from the Cross and is sustained by the virtues, allegories of the vari­ous, multifaceted truths of Christian understanding (see also Chapter 8). This journey is for all of Hildegard’s readers, and the playlet at the end, the EV, dramatizes their strug­gle. But ­there was another journey too, a more specific peregrination, one designed for Hildegard’s own community, and one they not only read about and studied but also performed.

CHAPTER 7

Fall and Recovery in the Ordo Virtutum

The liturgy of the Latin ­Middle Ages is a vast work designed both to allow the commemoration and cele­bration of past events and to demonstrate why and how recollection informs and transforms the pre­sent as well as the ­f uture. The foundational structures of medieval liturgical practices, ­whether ­t hose of the Office, of the Mass, or of ritual actions connected to or surrounding them, remained fairly consistent from the Carolingian period forward into the l­ater Latin M ­ iddle Ages. The formal properties of the Office and the Mass in general did not change in major degrees u ­ ntil the sixteenth c­ entury, and, in some places, not even then. What did change, sometimes significantly, ­were the substances and natures of the materials chosen for and created to function within set forms and structures: new offices, new sequences, the development of new hymnals, tropes of vari­ous kinds, chants for Ordinary texts of the Mass, and the components and rankings of ele­ ments in the church calendar.1 ­Every time a new religious order was formed or an older one was reformed, shifts in materials took place as well, and new feasts ­were established or older feasts e­ ither downgraded or emphasized in a variety of ways. Feasts of the Sanctorale w ­ ere in constant flux; feasts of the Temporale tended to be fixed, except with the slow evolution and establishment of Corpus Christi in the thirteenth and f­ourteenth centuries, which rocked the liturgical boat in all regions of Eu­rope and caused new forms to be generated as well. In the midst of ­these constant changes—­significant bodies of evidence for reading religious, regional, and po­liti­cal identities—­are ­those ­great numbers of liturgical ele­ments that can be deemed repre­sen­ta­tional: places in the liturgy where a person or groups of ­people stand forth, marked to deliberately reenact an event or set of events from the biblical or hagiographical past. Modes of repre­sen­ta­tion are of many types and subject to diverse interpretations and emphases. Most repre­ sen­ta­tional aspects of the liturgy are rooted in actions that are described in Scripture or hagiography: the Last Supper of the Mass liturgy, the events of Christmas,

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Easter, Easter week, and St. Nicolas plays, for example. But in the twelfth ­century it became increasingly impor­tant to relate dramatic actions within their liturgical frameworks to the larger picture of salvation history, as can be seen in plays of the prophets for Christmas or the Tergensee play of the Antichrist.2 Dramatic interpretations with cosmic implications could be and ­were superimposed on many ritual actions, reenactments included. The setting for a prophets play, an ordo prophetarum, is “all time,” although t­ hese works w ­ ere connected to the liturgy of Christmas and its octave through their texts.3 As theologians ­were adding a cosmic character to their studies in the twelfth ­century and cosmologists w ­ ere Christianizing the heavens, likewise t­hose who crafted new religious dramas and interpreted and reformatted older ones ­were thinking about time and the universe. This development can be seen in liturgical commentaries, a genre witnessing a resurgence in the twelfth c­ entury. In t­hese commentaries, the ­tables w ­ ere often turned so that the repre­sen­ta­tional events of the liturgy w ­ ere magnified, with interpretations of them added as ingredients to liturgical forms and structures. Thus, the hours of the Office became stages in the history of humankind or the events of the Mass liturgy w ­ ere seen to offer a progression through time. Such strategies had been commonplace in the work of Carolingian commentators, with Amalarius of Metz the most impor­tant. But the twelfth c­ entury saw a power­f ul renewal of such modes of thinking about liturgical practices, situating them within the broader history of humankind, and even of the earth and of the universe.4 What are the repre­sen­ta­tional acts set within the liturgy? The concept of liturgical drama has gone up in smoke in recent years as scholarly understandings of vari­ous components of it have been challenged.5 Michael Norton has written a monograph outlining the reasons why the term is problematic and suggests that perhaps it should not be used at all.6 Accordingly, the phrase assumes a modern point of view, one fully informed by the ­later development of drama in the West, with its roots deeply within the liturgical practices of the Latin ­Middle Ages. The historiographical trajectory of the vari­ous related concepts and of the term “liturgical drama” itself is traced in some detail in both Norton’s book and in the publications of Michal Kobialka.7 Both scholars, and in this they are part of a distinguished com­pany, advocate new approaches to this time-­honored subject. It can be said with certainty that religious plays, reenactments, representations—­ whatever they may be called—­even when displayed outside the church, ­were fully informed by liturgical understandings and practices as well as by allegorical interpretations known through commentators. Norton is right to emphasize the importance of returning to many finely grained studies of individual works. Only



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this w ­ ill provide the materials for the fresh narratives about the subject so desperately needed. Such efforts ­will take long and patient years of work, and by many able scholars, especially ­t hose well trained in the liturgy and in manuscript study, and t­ here is e­ very indication that the push has begun. It is clear that t­ hose who work on liturgical drama at the pre­sent time do so against a backdrop of consternation about the nature of the subject and criticism of many time-­honored modes of treatment. Just as t­ here is a cry for more careful, in-­depth studies, so too is t­here an equally engaging insistence on knowing the surrounding context of any par­tic­u­lar work. As Kobialka, Norton, Petersen, and ­others warn, each dramatic exercise belongs to the place that made it and to the liturgical history and understandings of that place and time; instruction about vari­ous liturgical practices and sacramental understandings may also be embodied within the texts, m ­ usic, and, indeed, the very structures of the works involved. Enter the Ordo virtutum, a unique work that requires its own re-­placing in the history of medieval religious drama. Surely its creator came out of a profound understanding of the tradition, however it is defined, but also was part of a desire to root liturgical action deeply within the turnings of the cosmos. Many paths lie open for the analy­sis of the Ordo virtutum. The one followed ­here examines Hildegard as a composer/artist and as the leader of a Benedictine community. She designed a m ­ usic drama with many roles and a variety of musical parts, suited to the singers she had at hand. Much of the ­music is very ­simple and repetitive, but uses the highly rhetorical methods she always follows for clear and concise declamation of words and phrases, as well as strategic resettings of par­tic­ u­lar musical phrases to underscore par­tic­u­lar works or link texts to build themes and ideas. Some of the pieces studied in ­earlier chapters of this book are virtuosic in their designs. From the ­music itself comes evidence that at least some of the ­women in Hildegard’s community ­were masterful singers who ­were able to render the complex antiphons and responsories she composed for the Office. In the play Ordo virtutum we can see her working not only for t­ hese fine singers but also for the entire community, whose members, we can assume, took the choral parts played by the assembly of virtues. With the play, then, it is pos­si­ble to think in ever greater detail about how Hildegard worked directly with all the w ­ omen she led, not only as a theologian and as an artist but also as a poet, a composer, and the head of a community. She used her love of repetition to an even greater degree in t­ hese musical settings, making the chants fairly easy to learn as a result, and yet they are never dull, for ­there is just enough change within the repetitions to keep musical interest ever high. Then one character does not sing at all: the Devil. Some might think it too simplistic to assign Satan’s role to Volmar, but I do not. He was the only man pre­sent

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regularly within the community and, more to the point, Satan is a character gendered masculine in Hildegard’s allegorical and exegetical thought world, and his mode of speaking is deeply rooted in Hildegard’s theological understanding of “voice.” In the Ordo virtutum Hildegard combined her understanding of prophets and prophecy with her views about the cosmic and ongoing drama of the “Fall.” Her play embodies ­these themes but situates them deeply within her treatise Scivias.

The Ordo virtutum as an Ordo Prophetarum The opening scene of the Ordo virtutum introduces three sets of p ­ eople, “patriarchs and prophets” (joined musically to the Apostles, see below), a generic group of virtues, with one mentioned in par­tic­u­lar: Knowledge of God, and the laments of entrapped souls. From the allegorical repre­sen­ta­tions featured it is clear that Hildegard designed her opening with references to the Pillar of the Word of God, Scivias III.iv, located in the northeastern quadrant of the Edifice of Salvation, a structure inhabited by many of t­ hese figures (see Chapter 6 and Appendix 4). Patriarchs and prophets: Who are ­t hese, who are like clouds? Virtues: O ancient holy ones, why do you marvel at us? The Word of God grows bright in the form of a h ­ uman being, and likewise we shine with him, constructing the limbs of his beautiful body. Patriarchs and prophets: We are the roots and you are the branches, the fruit of the living eye, and we are the shadow in that eye. In the creation of this opening, Hildegard drew upon a dramatic tradition well known in the twelfth ­century, the Ordo prophetarum. ­These short dramatic exercises ­were based on the long, treatise-­like sermon “Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arianos” by the fifth-­century bishop of Carthage, Quodvultdeus, himself a disciple of Augustine.8 In fact, throughout the Latin M ­ iddle Ages, the sermon was attributed to Augustine, and this helps explain its authority and widespread use in the



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Latin liturgy. Excerpts from the sermon ­were read in the Divine Office on Christmas Eve (or other days immediately associated with Christmas) in many regions of Eu­rope. The work was so well known and popu­lar that it generated a dramatic tradition in which characters from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and pagan antiquity w ­ ere summoned to come forth and sing their prophetic witnesses to the coming of Christ as the long-­awaited Messiah.9 In some cases ­those called upon wore symbolic costumes and their stock phrases of prophecy ­were sung “in character,” according to surviving rubrics.10 The sermon, and as a result some of the dramatic reenactments based on it, has strongly anti-­Jewish themes.11 Engelberg 103, the lectionary/antiphoner perhaps from Sponheim, contains readings from the “Contra Judaeos” sermon for the week before Christmas, and they are attributed to Augustine in this liturgical book (see Chapter 3).12 Hildegard must have known t­ hese liturgical and dramatic traditions, and she deliberately made a new kind of prophets’ play, transforming the convention utterly as she expanded upon this decision but allowing it to support what she wanted to do with pro­cession, costume, sung prophecy, and redemption.13 Just as I believe Scivias advances a kind of response to Hugh of St.-­Victor’s g­ reat summa, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, so Hildegard’s play offers a female counterpart to a tradition that featured (although not exclusively) male characters, the Ordo prophetarum. This transformation of tradition has points in common with the Ordo representacionis Ade, a twelfth-­century Anglo-­Norman work that also superimposes a Mariological reading on the prophets’ play and its tradition, as does Hildegard’s own reworking.14 Hildegard’s Ordo is not a static set of characters proclaiming the Christ to come. Rather it is a study of a musical recovery of redemption within an individual soul, a recovery that in her view was dramatically tied to the unfolding of the cosmos and the nature of time and eternity. Hildegard certainly knew about the sermon that inspired the tradition of the Ordo prophetarum and so too its firm association with the liturgy of Advent and Christmas and ideas of Christ’s coming as known throughout time, however imperfectly. Th ­ ese ideas play out constantly in her theology, as she argued that Christ’s adventus became slowly stronger as history unfolded and was most brilliantly displayed in the prophecies of John the Baptist, who was featured in the Advent season and sometimes in the tradition of the Ordo prophetarum as well. As we have seen in Chapter 4, Old Testament prophets glow brightly in Scivias II.i. in the time before the Incarnation, along with John the Baptist. In Hildegard’s play they sing familiar m ­ usic to further establish their characters. Although rooted in ­t hese liturgical and dramatic traditions, Hildegard’s Ordo became a vehicle for the repre­sen­ta­tion of her most cherished ideas about time

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and transformation through advent and birth, centered upon the Fall of Satan and of Eve, and the inoculation against sin and death provided by the Incarnation. She has the virtues respond to the prophets with their own prophetic brand of thought, predicting how the Word of God grows increasingly bright, and they know it, can see it, and can proclaim its meanings. The virtues, the new prophets, lead the protagonist Anima along the paths of theological understanding; they represent the varied fragments of a single truth.15 In their singing of the play (which I believed happened frequently), the community was participating in a exercise of mutual support and hortizontal learning. In her theological understanding, the virtues become a new set of prophets and apostles, teaching, leading, inspiring, as they help to bring the consummation of time that the patriarchs bore witness to in their writings. The short opening scene of the Ordo virtutum makes this point as it rolls out the characters for the opening action of the play, set as it is within Scivias.

New Prophets for the Ordo virtutum: Scivias III.viii, a Sonic Jesse Tree To make a new Ordo prophetarum, Hildegard borrowed virtues from within scenes well-­defined in the Edifice of Salvation of Scivias III and reordered them to create a slow burn in time.16 Working in this way, the w ­ omen who sang the play on the Rupertsberg had deep and rich contexts for each character and an understanding of the par­tic­u­lar ways that each virtue manipulated and turned back the challenges of evil. Into this pro­cession of characters Hildegard posited the figure Anima, a particularized kind of “everyman.” Anima is schooled primarily by two sets of virtues from the Edifice of Scivias Book III who instruct her in the mysteries of the Incarnation, making them a part of the drama, and one with cosmic implications. As the virtues are ideas of goodness that live in the Trinitarian Godhead, they lead the ­people t­oward understandings of truth and fulfillment.17 In turn t­ hese realizations inspire repentance, gratitude, and the expression of praise, as can be seen in the individual case of Anima. Her nurturing by the virtues leads to the recovery in musica of her initial voice and range of pitches. ­Table  7.1 demonstrates that the virtues selected for the play come primarily from two visions, Scivias III.viii and Scivias III.iii, and ­t hese take Anima on her specialized journey, one that leads to Victory and an emphasis on Chastity, a peregrination fitting for a nun. Furthermore, as has often been pointed out, the virtues Hildegard chose to emphasize in the play are ­t hose also featured in the Rule

­ able 7.1. Named and costumed virtues in the Edifice of Salvation (Scivias III) and in the T Ordo virtutum (Virtues in bold also appear by name in the EV.) Virtues as appearing in Scivias III.iii–­x

Numbers in order of appearance in the OV

Book III.iii (Tower of the Anticipation of God’s W ­ ill) Love of heaven (amor caelestis) 11 Discipline (disciplina) 12 Modesty (verecundia) 13 Mercy (misericordia) 14 Victory (victoria) 15 (appears multiple times) Patience (patientia) 17 Longing (gemitus) —­ Book III.iv (Pillar of the Word of God) Knowledge of God (Scientia Dei)

1

Book III.vi (The T ­ riple Wall) Abstinence (abstinentia) Liberality (largitatis) Piety (pietas) Truth (veritas) Peace (pax) Beatitude (beatitudo) Discernment (discretio) Salvation (salvatio)

—­ —­ —­ —­ —­ —­ 16 —­

Book III.viii (Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior) Humility (humilitas) 2 (returns repeatedly) Charity (caritas) 3 Fear of the Lord (timor Dei) 4 Obedience (obedientia) 5 Faith (fides) 6 Hope (spes) 7 Chastity (castitas) who bears Innocence 8–9 (returns repeatedly) (innocentia) Grace of God (gratia dei) —­ Book III.ix (The Tower of the Church) Wisdom (sapientia) Justice (second time) (iusticia) Fortitude (fortitudo) Sanctity (sanctitas)

—­ —­ —­ —­

Featured in the RB?

yes yes yes yes

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

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­Table 7.1. (continued) Virtues as appearing in Scivias III.iii–­x Book III.x (The Son of Man) Constancy (constantia) Celestial Desire (desiderio caelesti, but see amor caelestis above) Compunction of the Heart (compunctio cordis) Contempt of the World (contemptus mundi) Words of Concord (concordia)

Numbers in order of appearance in the OV

Featured in the RB?

—­ —­ —­ 10 —­

Book III.xiii ­Here is found the EV, a playlet that features a generic group of virtues and also the virtues in bold above: Knowledge of God; Humility; Victory.

of St.  Benedict.18 Most impor­tant are the challenges offered to Chastity by Diabolus, who raises the very anx­i­eties Hildegard apparently met frequently among ­women living in her religious community, and positioned t­ hese challenges within a well-­k nown understanding of the Fall and the workings of sin. The sung play engages profound but whispered worries, leaning on the help and guidance of allegories represented in song through the actions of the nuns’ peers. The Ordo virtutum works like a Scivias in miniature, but, unlike its counterpart at the close of Scivias (the EV), the sung play is designed especially for female monastics, and so with a Mariological and Incarnational cast over its entire way of working. ­After the initial array of virtues, introduced in a par­tic­u­lar order, one by one, the action of the play for much of its second half is governed by three virtues, Humility, Victory, and Chastity, with focus once again on the Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior and the Incarnation. Hildegard’s play is a monastic teaching tool, one that restores the vows that t­ hese Benedictine w ­ omen had taken up on the day of their consecration and followed ­every day in the plan regulating their lives. The ways in which Scivias created the context for understanding that play are many; Hildegard has been highly selective in the virtues chosen for the play, and ­there are reasons for this. As can be seen, Knowledge of God is first to appear in the play, a virtue that Hildegard chose for special importance (and one that does not appear in the Speculum Virginum). Then both sets of the virtues in the play Ordo virtutum as borrowed from Scivias have prophecies to share, as they appear in the play in two major groups, both of which promote the growth of Knowledge. The set of virtues associated with the Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior (Scivias III.viii), Humility, Charity, Fear, Obedience, Faith, Hope, and Chastity, work together to



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emphasize the importance of the Incarnation, that time-­transforming event that stands at the heart of Hildegard’s theology.19 As do the prophets in a Stirps Jesse image, t­hese virtues gaze on a central mystery, one that shows the Virgin in the stem of Jesse’s lineage, with Christ just above her. They partner with other virtues, with some overlap. ­Those commonly shown surrounding Christ’s head in Stirps Jesse iconography are the virtues mentioned in Isaiah 11: “[1] And ­there ­shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower ­shall rise up out of his root. [2] And the spirit of the Lord ­shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness. [3] And he ­shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord.” As has been seen in other works of art from the twelfth c­ entury, most notably the Stirps Jesse win­dow at Chartres cathedral, the Ordo prophetarum and the idea of the lineage of Christ as represented in a genealogical tree ­were becoming fused in a variety of ways in twelfth-­century images.20 Putting t­ hese two sets of virtues in play in Scivias III.viii, Hildegard built upon what was seemingly a visual model she must have known, something like the leaf from an antiphoner painted in the German Meuse valley (see Plate XII).21 It has been dated to the second quarter of the twelfth ­century and depicts a Jesse tree in the style of other German examples from the period, with Jesse as kind of strongman.22 Jesse is awake, and wearing a Jew’s cap, as he supports the ornate vines of his lineage. In a straight line up from him are found a king, the Virgin Mary, and above her Christ, with John the Baptist to one side and John the Evangelist to the other. Many of the figures hold scrolls with biblical texts appropriate to Advent, and the Virgin Mary holds a text from the Song of Songs. King David, with a text of prophecy from Psalm 143:5, looks up into the display, as does the prophet Isaiah, holding his messianic text from book 7.23 Two other prophets gaze upward and point up as well. Above them, to ­either side of the Virgin Mary, are two sets of three ­women, both pointing to Mary. It is hard to see w ­ hether ­t hese maidens are virgins or virtues, but they have a Queen, the Virgin Mary.24 Vari­ous renderings of this image ­were exceedingly popu­lar in northern Eu­rope during the time that Hildegard was writing Scivias and designing the paintings that accompany it. It was used in a variety of source materials, both liturgical and other­wise, and versions of it came to adorn copies of the Speculum virginum as well, a work that, as we have said, Hildegard may have had in her mind as she designed her own groupings of virtues and positioned them within a dramatic work.25 Just as Hildegard referenced the Ordo prophetarum in the opening of her play, so ­here she continued this strategy by drawing on a complex of ideas that mixed prophets with virtues and Mary with Christ, and placed both groups in the charged

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liturgical setting of Advent. The complexities of Scivias III.viii form the theological backdrop for the ideals advanced in the Ordo virtutum, with constant reference to Satan and the cosmic strug­gle for the usurpation of souls, especially, it would seem, the souls of consecrated virgins. The virtues found in Scivias III.viii are ­t hose who cavort in the opening section of the play, r­ unning in and out of the bedchamber of their king. In the opening speech of Scivias III.viii, Humility speaks of the “tree” and, referencing the steps of humility in the Rule of St. Benedict, warns ­t hose who overreach, as did Lucifer (Scivias III.viii.1). Charity continues in a highly dramatic fashion in the treatise, her speech punctuated with “O, O, O,” as t­ here is discussion of Satan’s fall from grace, which becomes the major idea in the play as well when t­hese virtues come forth and also when the Devil challenges their ideas about love. But then was born “the sweetest offshoot” of the tree, who is Christ. This speech brings reference to the end of time, “when the full number of the Gentiles has come in” (Scivias III.viii.2), and creates a context for understanding the play, especially its ending, discussed in Chapter 8. The very virtues that appear in the play are presented in dramatic guises in Scivias too. ­There are many other ways in which Scivias III.viii sets up the dramatic action of the play. According to Hildegard, Humility and Charity are the greatest of the virtues, and so she led off with them h ­ ere in the treatise, and as she did also in the 26 Ordo virtutum. Fear and Obedience follow with a warning about “secular paths” (Scivias III.viii.4). Chastity, the virtue that w ­ ill triumph l­ ater in the final part of the play, offers a speech ­here especially relevant to the life of nuns for she has “passed through the pure Fountain Who is the sweet and loving Son of God” (Scivias III. viii.7). This watering gives freedom rather than the fetters that Hildegard mentions ­earlier in her discussion of the state of married ­women, “plowed” and impregnated by semen.27 This defines the meaning of a key chant in the play, Hildegard’s “O uivens fons,” the living ­water that w ­ ill cleanse and purify, both through text and through its carefully designed m ­ usic, with reference to the powers of baptism as well. Grace of God, the last of the virtues featured in this vision, does not appear in the Ordo virtutum. It has a man’s face, and indeed it seems to speak like Christus medicus, a priest who treats the wounds of sin in a long discursus, which includes the importance of penance properly received. This healing role in the Ordo virtutum is assumed instead by Humility, a role appropriate for a female to assume.28 The “place” featuring this cast of characters is, ­after all, the Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior, and Christ becomes ­human at the Incarnation. So it is that ­after her introduction to t­hese seven virtues in Scivias, Hildegard moves to the



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mysteries of the Incarnation (Scivias III.viii.10) and then to the Stirps Jesse once again. ­Here in Scivias she brings forth the virtues from Isaiah 11, mentioned above, and mingles them with the set of seven that introduced the vision. ­After this feat is accomplished and an exegetical Stirps Jesse has been built before the reader’s eyes, Hildegard then plunges into the splendors of its meanings. The flower at the top of the plant is Christ, and all the virtues reside in him (Scivias III.viii.15 and 16), as they are his minions. He becomes then the tree of the Song of Songs 2:3, whose fruit is sweet to the taste, the beloved, the one for whom the soul holds herself chaste. Hildegard continues the imagery of love and takes the soul to the regal joining, one that ­will be filled with the splendor of the sound that lies within the womb of the virgin. The marriage of Christ to the faithful and chaste soul produces ­music.29 The prophets of old look through clouds t­oward a messiah they cannot see; the virtues mingle freely with him, face to face, bound with him as lover and spouse, and procreating their songs of praise.30 It is this aspect of Scivias III.viii that w ­ ill be directly challenged by Satan in the Ordo virtutum. ­After the prophecy of Isaiah pointing to the Incarnation as the mystery enshrined in the Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior, the original seven virtues return, explained in greater detail, with vestments and attributes bespeaking their work. ­These constitute the first set of virtues featured in the Ordo virtutum. Christ himself, “the Shining one Who was seated on the throne,” proclaims: “­These are God’s strongest labourers!” for they descend and ascend on a ladder within the pillar, carry­ing stones that are h ­ uman souls. The painting Hildegard designed to accompany this vision shows the virtues on a ladder described in Scivias III.viii, arrayed with all their vestments and with their attributes (see Plate XIII).31 As can be seen, they are seated for the most part, following the model of the sedes sapientiae, the seat of wisdom, that mystical image that represented Incarnation to the twelfth-­ century religious imagination, a time when many such images came to adorn churches and shrines.32 Hildegard’s virtues are seats of wisdom; they are “incarnating.” The ­women reenacting the play Ordo virtutum did so with their knowledge of the treatise providing an exegetical understanding of what they w ­ ere d ­ oing and why. The play, in the context of Scivias, represents the procreative power of their actions as nuns. They are models for the defeating of evil, both in the monastery and in the world at large, and Satan wants them to fail. Appendix 4 gives an overview of the Ordo virtutum and the journey of Anima as accompanied, inspired, and instructed by the ideas represented by the virtues. It is the prophetic understanding of Incarnational power that lies at the heart of Anima’s regaining of spiritual health, represented by what she is able to sing. It can be seen that the Dev­il’s five speeches are

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carefully integrated into the development of Anima’s fall and redemption, as well as into the responses of the virtues, both as a group and as individuals.

From Prophets to Virtues: Anima’s Fall to Satan in D (Section I) In the opening of Scivias III.xiii, the final chapter of the treatise, Hildegard discusses ­music at length, as she provides the texts of fourteen of her chants and of the Exhortatio virtutum, a truncated version of her sung play, the Ordo virtutum. She describes the three kinds of ­music that resound in the cosmos: songs of exhortation, songs of lament, and songs of rejoicing. The Ordo virtutum itself has three major families of melodies, one in D, which can exhort; one in E, which can function to lament; and one in C, for g­ reat victory and rejoicing. ­There are many ways to study ­these tonal areas, Hildegard’s use of them, and her work as a composer. My own path has been to describe her musical ideas in their theological profoundity, utilizing examples that are accessible for readers not trained in ­music or in the finer points of medieval m ­ usic theory. Hildegard clearly understood concepts of mode, maneria, range, and at least the s­ imple workings of the monochord. In my view she wanted the ­women who sang her ­music to be able to grasp the graphic powers of its unfolding, especially regarding ranges of pitches, and the three pillars of her sonic enterprise, in what­ever tonal area she was composing in: the final, the fifth, and the octave.33 The musical notation used in the scriptorium on the Rupertsberg, with a red line for f and a yellowish line for cc, suggests familiarity with Guidonian hexachords. She frequently transposes groups of pitches from one level to another, often to underscore a point made in the text. Many of her compositional moves are rhetorical and readily understood in their embodiment by singers and listeners alike.34 She composed like an artist, with ­great emphasis on the graphic within ­music, on sonic repre­sen­ta­tions that can be seen as well as heard; and she wrote texts that deliberately lended themself to this way of working in ­music. Her texts and her development of character are thus created to allow for the dramatic ups and downs that can be readily seen on the page and experienced in the act of singing. Highs and lows in pitches and pitch ranges often m ­ atter to her and are expressive of meanings; the same is true of the countless repetitions she has deliberately built into her ­music to interrelate ideas in her texts. Hildegard uses the importance she placed on the final, fifth and octave as well as the ranges of the ­music she composed to fill her compositions with musical



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puns. It was relatively easy for her to do this ­because she was both poet and composer, creating new works in both dimensions and interrelating them. Her antiphon “O uirtus sapientia” (see Example 6.1) is a splendid example of this, with the higher wing of wisdom described in the poem being set to the highest range of pitches, and comparable ranges for the m ­ iddle and lower wings. Hildegard was deeply sensitive to musical motion being reflective of the meanings of her poetry, and the best and most complicated example of this is the musical instruction and recovery of Anima in the Ordo virtutum, discussed below, and the progression of lamenting in the play, a subject studied h ­ ere and in Chapter 8. In her play, Hildegard took the techniques for creating meaning and text-­music relationships developed in her lyr­ics and applied them to a large-­scale dramatic form. She is also, then, exceedingly careful in the ways she sets the sounds of words, phrases, and lines of the poetic texts to m ­ usic. Her poetry proclaims. She frequently uses m ­ usic to link phrases through repetition to build more elaborate thoughts. This use of repetition has been explored through the musical examples found in Chapters 4 and 6, and now can be seen to function as well on the larger “stage” of the Ordo virtutum. A ­great deal can be learned about Hildegard’s ways of working with ­music in theological and liturgical frameworks by studying the material at the opening of the play that is composed using the first maneria, the pair of scales with the final of D. A major shift takes place within it, a deliberate move on Hildegard’s part as she alludes to one genre of dramatic work and elides it with another, changing every­t hing in the pro­cess. In ­doing this, she shows herself to be a student of dramatic traditions in the liturgy, suggesting her allegiance to the thought world of her con­temporary Honorius Augustodunensis as well.35 As she wrote Scivias Book III, with its Edifice of Salvation, she thought about her own play and made allegorical scenery for its unfolding. Hildegard, herself a seer known for her prophetic utterances, was fascinated by prophets and prophecy.36 She made ­these characters, their deeds and actions, part of the treatise, of the play, and of the chants, the texts of which are featured at the close of Scivias. She used musical signaling to retain the prophets’ initial D material throughout the entire musical fabric, creating sonic roots for the structure she built on their intitial statement. As can been seen in Appendix 4, in Section I of the play the prophets begin the Ordo virtutum, but a­ fter that initial exchange with the virtues, they are not seen again. The first set of virtues takes over, and well it might, for the soul Anima falls almost immediately when offered the gifts of the “world” by Satan. The ways that sin is suggested, embraced, and then fi­nally rejected by Anima call up the Garden and

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the Fall of Adam and Eve, and then the possibility of redemption thanks to the salvific actions of the Incarnation. The virtues realize that Satan is “in our midst,” as he was in the Garden.37 ­Here Hildegard shows her knowledge of traditional ideas about sin based on Augustine’s commentary Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichees, also as reworked in Gregory’s Moralia.38 In Nisula’s useful overview of the classic ways the serpent works in Genesis according to Augustine, first comes suggestion or temptation (suggestio). This is followed by the soul’s response, depending on w ­ hether or not greed (cupiditas) is engaged successfully. The check to greed comes from reason (ratio). If reason fails in its attempt, and the lower senses (libido) cause succumbing (consensus), then sin occurs, and the souls are “expelled from the happy life.” Augustine places the scheme in the context of the Garden of Eden, referencing Adam and Eve in the pro­cess, with Adam representing strength and Eve weakness. As with Hildegard and most other theologians in the Western Christian tradition, sinning in general is a replay of the actions that took place with the first ­humans at the time of the Fall.39 For Hildegard and other theologians of the twelfth c­ entury, Mary is the new Eve, and the play works to make this elemental point, with a focus on prophetic utterances concerning the fullness of time. In the play, Hildegard brings this view of the stages of sin to life. The pro­cess unfolds in both the OV and the EV. The word “suggestio” is used in the EV to introduce two of Satan’s speeches, demonstrating Hildegard’s knowledge of the tradition. In ­these two speeches Satan makes his suggestion, which is an appeal to “cupiditas,” or to greed for the splendors of the world. As the originally “felix” Soul begins to flail about succumbing to Satan’s suggestion, “ratio” enters, in the form of Knowledge of God. Knowledge of God fails in her attempt, and Anima succumbs to Satan, for she is greedy for the world. “Cupiditas” triumphs over her, and t­ here is “consensus.” Sin occurs. The “happy life” theme operates as well in Hildegard’s phrases describing Anima: before her fall she is “felix,” but ­after her descent into sin she is “infelix.” In the play, the virtues reference Adam and Eve in the Garden when they ask Anima, “Why do you hide your face in the presence of your Creator?” 40 The cosmic drama set up in many of the chapters of Scivias is h ­ ere reenacted, brought into the realm of the practical, the performed. Once Hildegard has completed this first stage of her work, she has also laid the foundation for her other religious lyr­ics as well, including the Rupert sequence discussed in Chapter 3. Anima is an Eve, who w ­ ill learn from humility and other virtues to become a Mary. Through the play, the ­women in Hildegard’s community teach each other as they deepen knowledge about their vocation. The challenges Satan throws at Anima and her helpers throughout the play are profound and are seemingly based on Hildegard’s knowledge of life in the monas-



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tery. Study of the play provides a glimpse into the pos­si­ble challenges she faced in her position of leadership. In regard to Anima, Satan says her supposedly h ­ umble ­labors are of no use, whereas in the world, on the other hand, she ­will be recognized for what she does. He is only able to speak: as a fallen angel, he can no longer sing, and this contrast continually makes the theological point in the dramatic work, emphasizing the cosmic character of the strug­gle between evil and good depicted ­here.41 The virtues’ work is to aid h ­ umans in recovering the singing voices that the fallen angel Satan once had and lost, and this is presented by Anima’s recovery in musica, described below (see also Chapter 5).42 Satan hates and envies ­human beings and the virtues who inspire them for his displacement, and ­these emotions motivate his character and are embodied in the sounds he makes. The stakes are massive: the very nature of time and the universe are in play. The Ordo virtutum can seem a strange work, one lacking in dramatic appeal, absent the theological understandings that support its action. Diabolus, Speech 1 “Fool, Fool! What good is your l­abor? Regard the world, and it ­will embrace you with ­great honor!” This appeal to pride is a relevant challenge to a monastic, where one rejects the world and supposedly lives for the good of all and not for individual reward.43 In his second speech, Satan mentions the earthly rewards he and the World can bestow, whereas the monastic takes a vow of poverty and obedience, both of which are denigrated in this challenge. Mary’s virtue, Humility, has the answer to this poison, which would have included Hildegard’s own modeling as head of the community. Satan challenges the tactile nature of the gifts he offers as opposed to the invisible gifts of the spirit and the Christlike model of monastic authority. Diabolus, Speech 2 “What good is it that ­there should be no power but God’s? I say that I ­will give every­t hing to the one who follows me and his own ­will; but you and all your followers have nothing to give, for none of you knows who you are.” As the Devil speaks only, he has no “tones” and this makes his expression static by comparison to the musical developments of the other characters. The ­music of the Ordo virtutum is predominantly situated in ­either the tonal area of D or E, with but two areas of significant departure moving ­toward C (see Appendix 4), to be discussed ­later. Anima sings initially in D, offering a melody that is often given in one form or another to the virtues, including in their opening

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statement. This ­music grows directly out of the initial melody Hildegard appropriated from the liturgy of the Apostles and then assigned to the Prophets and Patriarchs (Examples 7.1a and b). Hildegard offers long and direct quotations from the chant repertory only rarely in her compositions, and when she does so it is especially impor­tant. Most of her musical references are allusions, rather than long, direct, note-­for-­note quotations, and they waft in and out of the fabric of her compositions, bringing life and keeping the singer/listener on guard. It would be too easy to claim “ah, t­hese are mere formulae, of the kind found throughout the plainsong repertory.” 44 But this kind of dismissal would lead to a sterile plain, bereft of Hildegard’s musical richness. Rather direct quotations as found h ­ ere with “Qui sunt hi” are as rare in Hildegard’s ­music as direct quotations from other sources are in the rest of her theological treatises. Both the ­music and the theological texts come directly from the Living Light. With this par­tic­u­lar melodic gesture, then, one that ­w ill be picked up and expanded upon throughout the play, Hildegard used a strategy familiar from her other chants of introducing thematic material and slowly transforming it, through both expansion and truncation. But in this case, it was substantial material directly borrowed from the liturgy. The virtues ­will build much of their own song out of this chant, and so the ­music they sing ingrafts them within the ancient actions of the prophets and the Apostles. The m ­ usic the patriarchs sing in the Ordo virtutum is one of the few places so far identified in the drama seeming to draw at length on a well-­known chant from the

Ex. 7.1. (a) Opening of the responsory “Qui sunt hi” as found in a twelfth-­century antiphoner. Austria, Klosterneuberg, 1012, fol. 72r (Feast of St. Matthew and other Apostles as well as All Saints); (b) Opening query of the Prophets from the Ordo virtutum. R, fol. 478v.



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Divine Office (another possibility ­will be discussed below). This chant has been borrowed directly from the responsory “Qui sunt isti,” sung for individual Apostles and for the Common of Apostles, as can be seen in Example 7.1.45 “Qui sunt isti” (or “Qui sunt hi,” a variant) was also sung on the Feast of All Saints, the text of which is transcribed from Engelberg 103 in Chapter 3 (Appendix 3), and so would have been well known to Hildegard and her congregation, both b ­ ecause it was repeated many times during the year for feasts of apostles and ­because of its position in the ­middle of the Matins ser­vice on All Saints, the day of the nuns’ consecration.46 The complete text with its verse is: Matins of All Saints, Second Nocturn, No. 2.1 (Borrowed from the Common for Apostles): “Who are ­t hese who fly like clouds and like doves to their win­dows: Their wings are full of eyes, torches in the midst ­running to and fro with sparks” (Qui sunt isti qui ut nubes volant et quasi columbae ad fenestras suas; [probable verse]: “Dorsa eorum plena sunt oculis et scintille ac lampades in medio discurrentes”). The text of the response is from Isaiah 60:8 and the verse usually sung in the liturgy with this response is a composite, with language borrowed from Apocalypse 4, which offers a vision of the throne of God, with the twenty-­four ancients and the four living creatures, who are interpreted as the four evangelists. To complete the chant in the memory would have been pos­si­ble for the w ­ omen in Hildegard’s community, and, of course, to ponder the multiple meanings it would have had for them, linking prophets to Apostles and making them part of a long train of believers from the Judeo-­ Christian past. This m ­ usic was borrowed from the liturgy for a reason, as Hildegard used it as the “roots” for one of the most impor­tant complexes of musical materials in the play, that in D, as ­will be seen below.47 Through the deliberate reuse of and elaboration upon this ­music, Hildegard’s virtues grow sonically from their roots, the prophets (Examples 7.2 and 7.3), and become new Apostles as well, establishing their teaching role in the formation of religious tradition and conversion. All three groups are then interrelated: the prophets and patriarchs who sing the chant in the play, the Apostles, from whose feast the m ­ usic was borrowed, and the virtues who continue to adapt the m ­ usic to their own work of salvation. This borrowed material is crucial to the meanings of the ­whole. ­Here, the theme of prophecy plays out in the ­music: the virtues are the newer members of this prophetic tribe and continue in the song offered initially by the prophets of old, embracing it and transforming it. Anima is to be one with them eventually as a redeemed soul. Hildegard built Anima’s ensnarement by the Devil into what she sings through the use of mode/maneria, pitch, and melodic transformation. As I have tried to show throughout discussion of her ­music, Hildegard, artist/composer, cared deeply about range and rises and falls of pitches and melodic formulas

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Ex. 7.2. (a) The virtues’ opening from the Ordo virtutum is related to yet transforms the prophets’ ­music. R, fol. 278v; (b) “Felix Anima” (opening), which mirrors the virtues’ opening. R, fol. 278v.

Ex. 7.3. Anima, weighed down, is conquered (opening). R, fol. 279r.

within range to underscore meanings in many of her chants. So too she cared about resettings and borrowings of ­music to link groups of textual phrases. ­Here she put t­ hese related skills to work in a large-­scale dramatic statement. The virtues’ opening, in a speech speaking of building the “beautiful” body of Christ, and addressing the prophets, takes their prophetic “root” and then grows from it musically, upward into the lofty branches of fulfillment, as can be seen in ­Example 7.2a. The D melody that appears so many times throughout the play is essentially an “outgrowth” of the root chant found in Examples 7.1a and b. This initial root melody sung by the prophets and patriarchs features the final d ornamented by its lower neighbor and then the descent to a which outlines the basic pitches of the lower range of the area. Then back up to d, via c. The d is established further by the upper third, and then the fourth, and the melody then circles around d and lands ­there (Ex. 7.1). When the virtues respond as branches, they do so in d, but ornament the pitch by leaping up the fifth to a. They then mirror the descent to a of the prophets’ melody. So already they have expanded the range, providing the entire lower scale of the pair in D. And then, on the word admiramini, they offer the upper octave, reaching up to d above D, before descending to an ornamented final pitch the octave below (Ex. 7.2a) The virtues are the “new” prophets and new Apostles with full understanding of Christ and the Christian mission of salvation. The musical statement made by the virtues in Example 7.2a is then taken up by Anima in Example 7.2b.



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The ways in which Hildegard manipulates the melodic lines designed for Anima over the course of the play demonstrate her desire to use musical structure and melodic characteristics to embody change, development, and recovery within this character. Anima’s musical utterances become symbolic of her spiritual health. She begins as one with the lofty song of the virtues, the fifth, and then the octave of the D tonal area. H ­ ere she has it all and is felix. But, like humankind more generally, Anima is doomed to fall and ­will become in need of redemption (Ex. 7.3). The ­music she sings here initiates the learning pro­cess she undergoes in her journey from w ­ holeness, to loss, and to redemption. Anima’s m ­ usic embodies the journey of humankind through time, a way that is marked by recovery of song, a theme emphasized at several points in Scivias and in Hildegard’s liturgical lyr­ics. Anima’s flesh soon becomes heavy and weighs her down as she takes the Dev­il’s appeal to the world and enjoyment of it into account. And so, as is often the case in Hildegard’s m ­ usic, the graphic display of pitches and their rises and falls is symbolic. Anima has lost the ability to make the leap of the fifth from d to aa, and cannot even dream of scaling the octave any more. The rest of the play ­will show her slow recovery as she moves t­ oward achieving the full range of pitches that the virtues initially display in D, the fifth up to aa and the octave up to dd, a range that Anima initially had, but lost. She can only leap up the fourth from d to g h ­ ere and stays in the lower notes of the range (see Example 7.3). As the text proclaims, Anima is “heavy” with sins of the flesh, having cast off her garment of light and redemption. In this musical pun, her song embodies and represents this challenged spiritual state. And in this weakened condition then exploited by Satan Anima moves “off stage.”

The Virtues React to Anima’s Fall: The Meanings of E and of “O Plangens Vox” (Interlude 1) The tonal area of E is also established in the opening of the Ordo virtutum. The third group to sing ­after the Prophets and the virtues in D are the embodied souls, who lament their conditions in E. This lament provides a major second pole, one that balances the D area (see also Chapter 8). The virtues sing in both for they lament and they celebrate and encourage. The lament of the trapped souls in E ­will resonate with other significant chants ­later in the play, beginning with “O plangens uox.” The virtues react in two ways to Anima’s fall and to the Dev­il’s opening two speeches. ­After Anima’s fall and between the two first speeches of the Devil discussed above, they hear cries of pain from the fallen soul and express their sorrow in the long chant “O plangens uox” (Example 7.4). This chant also continues

Ex. 7.4. “O plangens uox.” R, fol. 479r.

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Ex. 7.4. continued

the tonal area of E and its contrast to D. Built into it are two sets of refrains, and as can be seen in Example 7.4, one of ­t hese grows in power musically and comes to take over the entire chant, infecting it with woe. The chant text posits that humankind was destined to fall from the beginning, but so it might be redeemed. This chant is the polar opposite of the chant “O uiuens fons,” to be discussed l­ater. The position of t­ hese two chants in the play is crucial as well: they represent stages in Anima’s recovery (see Appendix 4). The form of the lament “O plangens uox” is as follows (musical phrases are indicated by numbers, refrains by letters): O plangens uox est hec maximi doloris ACH ACH (Refrain A) quedam mirabilis uictoria in mirabili desiderio dei SURREXIT (Refrain B) in qua delectatio carnis se labenter abscondit

1 1′ 2 2′

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HEU HEU (Refrain A’) ubi uoluntas crimina nesciuit et ubi desiderium hominis lasciuias fugit LUGE LUGE ERGO (Refrain B) in his, Innocentia que in pudore bono integritatem non amisisti et que avariciam gutturis antiqui serpentis ibi non devorasti.

2 2 2 1 (expansion of refrain B) 2″ 1″ (expansion of refrain B)

(O wailing sound of g­ reat sorrow is this, ach, ach, a certain amazing victory already arose in its wondrous desire for God in which delight of the flesh secretly hid itself, woe, woe, where formerly the ­will knew no crime and where desire fled h ­ uman wantonness; Therefore mourn, mourn for this, Innocence, who in your good modesty lost no perfection you who with the greed of the ancient serpent’s gullet did not devour.) “O plangens uox” has a fairly restricted range for Hildegard and remains in E throughout its slithering meanderings (see Example 7.4). Hildegard created two phrases of ­music which, joined to their par­tic­u­lar texts, make a set of refrains. ­These may have been sung by the entire group of virtues, with soloists taking the rest, and such a strategy for performing was taken up by the early m ­ usic group Sequentia (Benjamin Bagby and Barbara Thornton) in their musically profound recording of the play.48 Some texts of the refrains are dramatic responses, which are recalled throughout the ­music of “O plangens uox,” woven as they are within it, as can be seen in the example. In the opening line, a variant of refrain A is found on the word “maximi,” and a variant of refrain B is found on the word “doloris.” Thus the lamenting voice described in the text includes both the “ach ach” (woe, woe) and the “luge luge” (mourn, mourn) that appear ­later in the piece. If the “voice” is sung slowly, in the mode of a lament, the phrases come into play immediately, and the singers might recognize that even the opening line is impreg-



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nated with woe and with the charge to mourn. The meaning of the text as a w ­ hole is that in its initial creation humankind was already infected with the secret desire of the flesh, and the m ­ usic is sickened too with cells of pain. The idea that the first day in Genesis is already one of joy and sorrow, faith and falling from faith, was of major importance to Hildegard, as discussed in Chapter 4. Th ­ ese cries of woe become impor­tant throughout the play, reoccuring in several places, including in the final chant, “In principio,” to be discussed in Chapter 8. Although the piece is in the tonal area of E, Hildegard has emphasized the octave c to cc throughout, although never completely u ­ ntil the final line. So, for example, the descent from cc to e on “doloris,” which then occurs in several of the lines to follow. But when c does occur in a line, cc above is not to be found. In mode 3, the reciting tone for the psalmody is cc, and so to find this pitch emphasized ­here is not surprising; but Hildegard keeps the lines working to stress only one part of the octave cc down to c. Only the last line, which describes the purity of the virginal virtue Innocence, offers the closure provided from the entire octave, cc to c, an octave that symbolizes victory in the OV, as ­w ill be seen in discussion of this virtue below. With the ongoing repetitions throughout the piece, and the use of refrains, this chant, in spite of its length and apparent complexity, would be fairly easy to learn, even for a group. And if the group could not h ­ andle all the m ­ usic, weaker singers could at least manage the refrains. The way Hildegard handled the tonal area of C could be prophetic, looking ahead to the two places in the play where she composed chants in this tonal sphere.

Ordo virtutum, Sections II and III In Section II of the play (see Appendix 4), the first set of virtues described in discussion of Scivias III.viii above provide reactions to the plight of Anima (see also Appendix 4) above. They do stay very much in character, as described in Scivias, and sing joyfully within the Stirps Jesse. But their joy is expressed by ideas that celebrate their own freedom from the fall Anima has just under­gone, and so they rub excesses of salt in her wounds as they taunt the fallen Satan (and so too Anima) with the introductory words “We dwell in the heights!” ­These virtues, celebrating in the lofty branches of the tree, know the bedroom of the King and can approach the mystical eye of the Godhead. They do so ­because unlike Anima, they have remained intact and faithful, unlike the angels who fell u ­ nder the leadership

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of Satan. The longest of the speeches in this joyful throng is that of Chastity, who works with the imagery of sexuality found in Scivias III.viii as well, boiling down a long set of ideas into her ­simple speech, which is then referenced by the entire ensemble, who celebrate their freedom and the symphony of songs they alone can sing. In the midst of this cele­bration of who they are and the joys they share, Satan attempts to blight them in his hatred. He addresses two of them directly, Fear of the Lord and Charity, the two virtues, ironically, that he most sorely lacked. Diabolus, Speech 3 “­Great! G ­ reat! What is this ­great Fear and this ­great Love? Where is the champion? Where the prize-­giver? You ­don’t even know what you are worshipping!” ­Here the Devil pushes against the idea of the heavenly courts of the king and the spousal link celebrated by the virtues. It is all made up, unreal. ­There is nothing to embrace, nothing to enjoy. This bridegroom is invisible and actually the virtues are pleading for the worship of nothing! He expresses what might have been a fear for some consecrated nuns, betrothed from the beginning of their monastic lives to Christ. But it is a larger fear experienced by all who worship an invisible God. With this challenge Satan throws down his glove, managing to keep Anima in his own embrace as a result. Although virtues from Scivias III.viii, Humility and Chastity, are major actors throughout the Ordo virtutum, Hildegard lifted a set from Scivias III.iii as well to interact with them in Section III of the play (see Appendix 4). Her reasons for ­doing so seem apparent and are built into the Tower of the Anticipation of God’s ­Will (Scivias III.iii). It too rests on the prophetic voices that knew about and proclaimed the mysteries of the Incarnation, with reference to Isaiah 11, the foundational text for the Stirps Jesse, and also for Scivias III.viii. The virtues presented in Scivias III.iii are rooted in the Circumcision, seen as the Old Testament prefiguration of Baptism in Hildegard’s treatise. Their voices are prophetic. Hildegard said of the five virtues featured in Scivias III.iii and their location: “The tower is four cubits wide, for t­ hese virtues by God’s w ­ ill are brought about in p ­ eople by placing them in the world of the four ele­ments, from which, while they are in the body, they get physical nourishment. It is seven cubits high; for ­t here ­were seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are so firm and tall that the tower raised itself on them u ­ ntil, ­after the Incarnation of My Son, which was prefigured in the circumcision of the Old Testament, the Church came forth from it.” 49



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The group of virtues from Scivias III.iii found in the Ordo virtutum is introduced by Contempt of the World, whom Hildegard borrowed from Scivias III.x, the only one of that par­tic­u­lar cohort of five virtues appearing in the play. Contempt may introduce the group of virtues from Scivias III.iii, who led the charge in the Tower of the Anticipation of God’s ­Will, for several reasons.50 In both her costume and Hildegard’s discussion of her allegorical meanings, Contempt stands in the Edifice very near to the end of the journey and Hildegard’s description of the Son of Man at the apex of the structure (see Chapter 8). Her message is one of hope and of reward, and she provides a deliberate foil to the first of Satan’s challenges in the play: that the “world” ­w ill give satisfying rewards to ­those who join him. But the rewards of salvation through Christ’s watering are eternal, with reference again to the Garden of Eden, “Viuens fons,” and the recovery of viriditas: “To the person who overcomes, I w ­ ill give to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of my God [Apoc. 2:7]. For the fountain of salvation has drowned death, and poured its stream into me to make me grow green in redemption.”51 In this speech is another allusion to the restoration of viriditas through Christ, a new Adam for a new Eden, and one emphasized in the sequence for Rupert studied in Chapter 3.52 The role given to the virtues of the “flowering branch,” ushered in ­here by Contempt in the play, demonstrates natu­ral flourishing, the subject of Scivias III.viii as well. Hildegard used ­t hese par­tic­u­lar virtues to enter fully into the most direct strug­gle with Satan. Th ­ ese virtues are leaving their cherished place in the Heavenly Jerusalem, where they feast with Christ, to join in the fray and help lift Anima, a stone-­heavy soul, upward to Christ.53 Humility has charged them with a task, to find the lost drachma (Luke 15:8–9) and to “crown her who perseveres blissfully.”54 Humility and Chastity ­were chosen from Scivias III.viii to be the star characters of the Ordo virtutum. Following them with another major role is Victory, from Scivias III.iii. Hildegard described her prophetic ser­v ice within the long unfolding of time that would lead to the final day: “And the fifth figure foreshadows Victory; for a­ fter the mercy I showed by the circumcision wherein I willed to send my Son into the world, the same circumcision gave rise to victory, which then went on with increasing strength till the coming of My Son, and goes on with Him u ­ ntil the last day. For in My Son I defeated the ancient serpent, which had exalted itself over His head and bound the ­human race by a thousand evil deeds like a chain. My Son triumphed over t­ hose evil deeds with all the arms of war that, like flowers of virtue, arose in His Incarnation.”55

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The importance Hildegard bestowed upon Victory as offering prophetic foreshadowing and her role throughout time can be found embodied within the last virtue of the set taken from Scivias III.iii, Patience (who is, of course, patient in awaiting her turn to appear). She raises the subject of the restoration of viriditas, greenness, the life-­giving force that was blighted in the Fall. Patience looks to “the sight of the true Light” (Scivias III.iii.12). Hildegard says: “But Patience is victorious, and in good p ­ eople conquers every­thing with the help of God, no m ­ atter how they are opposed and exhausted by the snares of the evil spirits” (Scivias III.iii.10). Patience sings a melody with a final of the pitch b, the note just before c, which, I ­will argue, is the tonal area of Victory. Patience is calmly awaiting Victory and her triumphant pitch class in the denouement of the play (see Appendix 4). Humility comes back and tells the virtues to recall their roots singing to them in the lofty D melody, one that literally recalls the musical roots found in the opening m ­ usic of the Prophets and Patriarchs. It was their own birth in the mind of the creator that has made the narrative pos­si­ble, and m ­ usic has the power of recollection (a Platonic understanding as discussed in Chapter 1), g­ oing beyond mere repre­sen­ta­tion.56

Section IV: Anima Becomes Penitent and Slowly Starts to Recover Her “D” Melody In order to be redeemed, Anima has to change, and she begins to do so in Section IV of the play, just a­ fter the com­pany of virtues found in Scivias III.iii has finished singing their lament for her, “Heu, heu, nos virtues.” Anima, one of the compelled sheep, is the kind of person described in Scivias III.iv. In that way station of the Edifice, the virtue Knowledge of God preaches to ­these, the ­humans who ultimately ­will be saved: imagery in the play references ­these sheep that w ­ ill be found (Luke 15). Anima stinks of sin and fears that she cannot be forgiven, and it is this deep remorse that saves her.57 Hildegard’s use of musical material in Anima’s recovery demonstrates yet another example of her employment of the graphic power of m ­ usic, its rises and falls, to underscore both texts, and in this case, of character. When Anima comes back into the play ­after her seduction, she looks up at the virtues aloft and shining in splendor. At this point she sings in a higher range, but in E, longing for them, wailing “you are in the highest Sun and how sweet is your home.”58 This section of her lament is crucial, for she has broken out of the static quality of melody sung in E by the trapped souls, and creates a musical pun reaching up to gg on the phrase “highest sun.” ­Here, too, Anima quotes from “O plangens uox,” chiming in with the lament offered before by the virtues and referencing the chant of the



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trapped souls e­ arlier in the play (see Chapter 8). And so Anima regrets her m ­ istakes as she remembers what once belonged to her before her Fall (Example 7.5). This realization is a foreshadowing of her transformation. Anima next moves to the lower range of the D tonal area as she sings a cry of woe to the virtues: this is the first time she has sung in D since her reappearance. She is praying for redemption, for help in regaining her former state previous to her fall. Once again, as at the moment of her fall, she can only climb as high as g, the pitch below the longed-­for leap of a fifth to the pitch aa (Example 7.6). But then comes the transforming moment: Anima sings “nunc est michi” in D, at first still trapped in the heaviness of her flesh, not yet making the d to a leap of a fifth that characterized her ­music before her fall. Her penitential moment is then transformed in the next phrase on the words “suscipiatis me,” “take me up.” On this cry for help (actually a musical pun) Anima achieves her aa, the fifth above d, following her deeply expressed need for confession and penance. She then wavers between the fifth, d to aa, and the fourth d to g (Example 7.7). In their speech, the virtues joyfully respond, taking up Anima’s restored leap from d to aa and building upon it, as can be seen in Example 7.8, from the opening of their response to Anima, “run to us . . . ,” with nearly the same pitches as for the setting of “suscipiatis.” This is a familiar compositional strategy of Hildegard: resetting similar musical phrases to link them and deepen meanings, and h ­ ere too creating yet another musical pun as well.

Ex. 7.5. From Anima’s lament. R, fol. 480v. [You are in the highest sun and how sweet is your home]

Ex. 7.6. Anima begins to sing in D. R, fol. 480v.

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Ex. 7.7. Anima makes the 5th. R, fol. 480v.

Ex. 7.8. The virtues beckon. R, fol. 480v.

Anima then confesses that she is a sinner and asks in E that she might be able to rise in the blood of the son of God, and then pleads in the lower range of D for the true medicine, Humility. Humility and the virtues wish to minister to her and call upon the living fountain to complete their work: the power of the sacraments to redeem (Example 7.9).

“O uiuens fons”: The Musical Interlude that Conquers Satan’s Attack The text of “O uiuens fons” describes the merciful fountain of Christ, which flows with its good grace in Scivias II through the sacraments of the Church, both of baptism (II.iv.6) and of the Eucharist (II.vi.29). In Scivias III.viii.13, this “Fountain of Life,” open and in plain sight, is compared to the Son of God, flowing for t­ hose who seek its w ­ aters in faith and in mercy. In the chant text “O uiuens fons,” the redeemed are described as shining brighter than they did even previous to the Fall, making the point that Adam and Eve’s actions w ­ ere indeed a kind of happy fault, for ­t hese ­humans and their entire race ­were even dearer to God when fi­nally



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Ex. 7.9. “O uiuens fons.” R, fol. 481r.

purchased on the altar of the Cross.59 The watering of Christ as lover in Scivias III. viii creates the child Innocence, called upon in the Ordo virtutum from the womb of the virtue Chastity. This is a new kind of procreation, one that uses the imagery of the Incarnation as an antidote to the lustful greed of Satan. Anima ­will be one of ­those who w ­ ere fallen and redeemed, gleaming more brightly than would have been pos­si­ble before.

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“O uiuens fons” is structured around repeating musical phrases: O uiuens fons, quam magna est suauitas tua (musical phrase w: low E range) qui faciem istorum in te non amisisti (w is transposed upward and moves to D) sed acute preuidisti (musical phrase y, compact version) quomodo eos de angelico casu (musical phrase y, expanded) abstraheres qui se estimabant (musical phrase y, with range extended both upward and down) illud habere (low range of phrase y) quod non licet sic stare: (upper range of y, followed by the low section) Unde gaude, (low section of y once again) filia Sion, (high section of y contracted) quia Deus tibi multos reddit quos serpens de te abscidere (very long descent, dd to ornamented c) uoluit qui nunc in maiori luce fulgent, quam prius illorum causa fuisset. (Low and high sections of y contracted) (dd to ornamented d descent but with a final move back to e) (O living fountain, how ­great is your sweetness, you who did not reject the gaze of t­ hese upon you but acutely foresaw how you could avert them from the fall the angels fell which no law allows to be thus so rejoice D ­ aughter Sion for God is giving you back many whom the Serpent wanted to cut from you who now gleam in a greater brightness than would have been pos­si­ble before.)60 The virtues’ chant in praise of the cleansing fountain, “O uiuens fons,” forms the counterpoint and foil for “O plangens uox,” discussed above. Although “O uiuens fons” begins and ends in E as does “O plangens uox,” much of “O uiuens fons” is basically set in D, and so the polarity between ­t hese two tonal regions in the play is referenced in this chant, and the emphasis shifts dramatically (see Ex. 7.9). The ­music of “O uiuens fons” is built from numerous repetitive phrases; once a few of them w ­ ere learned, the rest would have followed suit for the members of Hildegard’s community to sing. In the plan of the chant, it can be seen that phrase “y” consists of a lower section and a higher one, and both of ­t hese sections are contracted and expanded multiple times. In this chant, Anima is schooled in the up-

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per octave of her D range, as if she needs to relearn what she once had and lost. ­After the magnificent chant, with its ­middle section in the higher range of D, Anima is ready to confront her seducer. And, true to form, he returns to taunt her just at the end of “O uiuens fons,” opening Section V of the play. Diabolus, Speech 4 “Who are you, and whence do you come? You embraced me, and I led you forth; and now you return and confound me! But I ­will throw you down in ­battle.” Now Anima comes forth with musical skills, the knowledge revealed by the virtues, and wet with the fountain of a renewed baptism. She is ready to meet the challenge. In her speech to Satan, “Ego omnes uias meas malas esse cognovi” (I recognized that all my ways w ­ ere wicked), Anima “knows the ways” that ­were wrong and has chosen new ones, taking up the command of the treatise: “scivias.” And, as she has gained the power of Knowledge of God, she fi­nally makes the octave of D again, ­doing so at last as she calls on the virtue Humility, the most Marian of the virtues, who has brought her safely through to her promised redemption, a sadder but wiser soul (Example 7.10).

Section V: Mariological Prophecy Achieved Through Victorious ­Music in C By the time the ­battle begins in Section IV of the play (see Appendix 4), it has essentially been won as far as Anima is concerned. Satan has asked to fight, and Anima has been able to answer him, toe to toe. It is over. But t­ here is more at stake, and it relates to the defense of the entire monastic community and the prophetic power of the virtues to lead ­human minds to God through knowledge. The vow to be defended h ­ ere is celibacy. Just as Anima achieves her “aa” and her “dd” octave in her fight to regain control of this tonal area and its familiar melodic material, so the virtues as prophets lead the community to an Incarnational understanding,

Ex. 7.10. Anima makes the octave. R, fol. 481r.

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the gaining of which gives ­every person his or her own “ave,” that greeting to Mary in the moment that time was transformed.61 Hildegard has designed the ­music of the play so that the tonal area of C is foreshadowed and then employed several times, the reference to a borrowed chant clarifying over time. As I have shown above, an allusion to C is built into the chant of woe, “O plangens uox.” This reference may recollect the happy fault, the fall of Adam, which meant that redemption would be necessary and would be achieved. In medieval plainchant tonal areas might or might not be symbolic (it seems usually not!). Examples of ­every configuration can be found in the vast chant repertory, especially given that the modes are filled with common formulas. The question about w ­ hether or not a par­tic­u­lar tonal area or formula was chosen for some kind of meaning depends on the situation, and in a ­music drama ­every one of ­these is unique. Evaluation can only proceed on a case-­by-­case basis. In the case of Hildegard, we have a known composer-­poet making the choices, and the choices w ­ ere made in the context of a par­tic­u­lar theological enterprise. She could use commonly known modes and formulas for her own purposes. I began my study of Hildegard’s understanding of C some time ago in my first publication on Hildegard with references to her final Scivias chant, a responsory for virgins, “O nobilissima uiriditas”: this chant closes out the set of pieces studied in Chapter 8 and is a major summation of Hildegard’s work as theologian, poet, and composer.62 As can be seen in Examples 7.11 and 7.12, Hildegard began this chant with a power­ful and readily perceived reference to the eleventh-­century antiphon “Aue regina celorum.” The reference is not only in the notes but also in the text: the section of the newly composed chant that describes “roots” relates to the ­earlier antiphon that cites Mary as the “radix.” Hildegard’s reuse of the opening of “Aue regina celorum” in her chant “O nobilissima uiriditas” is a classic example of her use of quotation in her own compositions. Her way of working is to start with a melodic statement of some sort and then rework it in a variety of ways, often in couplets or triplets, as has been discussed in examples above. ­Here too Hildegard repeats the borrowed melody almost exactly but then expands upon it in the next statement, returning at key cadential points. “Aue regina celorum” was just coming into the liturgy in Hildegard’s region, as a quick look through the chant files of CANTUS reveals. It is not found in Engelberg 103, for example. I have referenced a copy of the chant as found in Paris, National Library, lat. 12044, a twelfth-­century antiphoner from St.-­Maur des Fossés, a Benedictine abbey on the outskirts of Paris, and far from the Rhineland (see Example 7.12). It was sung in this liturgy for the psalm of Nones on the feast of the Assumption, and the notation is on a staff and easy to transcribe, whereas in many

Ex. 7.11. Opening of “O nobilissima uiriditas,” last chant text in Scivias, compared to the opening of “Aue Regina caelorum.”

Ex. 7.12. “Aue regina celorum.” Paris, National Library lat. 12044, fol. 177v.

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sources from Hildegard’s region the notation is unheightened or, as the twelfth-­ century addition to the eleventh-­century Quedlinberg gradual found in Berlin, not supplied at all.63 The verse is irregular, but the couplets rhyme throughout; it embodies the poetics of the l­ ater eleventh c­ entury: Aue regina celorum Aue domina angelorum Salue radix sancta Ex qua mundo lux est orta Gaude gloriosa Super omnes speciosa Vale ualde decora Et pro nobis semper Christum exora. (Hail queen of the heavens Hail Lady of angels Greetings holy root from which the light of the world has risen Rejoice glorious one, more beautiful than all Be ever strong beautiful one And always pray to Christ for us.) It is clear why Hildegard might have liked this text and chosen it for special prominence in her responsory for Virgins, the text of which is found in Scivias. As do so many of her works, it emphasizes the Incarnation with its use of “Aue” as the opening, and it speaks of the light of the world that rises from Mary. She is queen of the heavens ­here, and of angels in par­tic­u­lar, other themes and subjects that Hildegard developed in her liturgical poetry. H ­ ere Mary is the root, another way of making her part of that g­ reat plant with the dazzling light of Christ as its flower. The piece was settling down at the time Hildegard wrote Scivias and her play, and the texts show slight variants from place to place, as does the m ­ usic. The mode is not consistent across regions, although the melodic contours are, and it is most often transcribed in transposed mode 6, which gives it a final of c. The scribe writing the piece in lat. 12044 was confused about the text at one point, and so offered two choices, one written above the other, and made a correction as well. As can be seen from Example 7.12, the piece has two main sections, labeled A and B. A repeats multiple times with slight variation most of the time, with the exception of the first statement which is nearly exact.



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The clear reference to “Aue regina celorum” in the final Scivias chant “O nobilissima uiriditas” means that Hildegard knew this chant at the time she wrote the Ordo virtutum as well. The ­music of the Scivias chants builds up to this reference in the final piece. It suggests that her use of the common formulas in mode 6 chants with finals of c found in the Ordo virtutum may also be references to her responsory “O nobilissima” and to the Marian antiphon “Aue regina celorum.” The march through vari­ous pitch levels to the tonal area of C in the Ordo virtutum has been explored by several scholars. I think the reasons Hildegard had for adopting this strategy may be several: she often worked in multiple layers of symbolic meanings at once. The one that stands out for me is her hermeneutic of prophecy, one established at the very beginning of her play and continuing throughout. This idea is crucial to her theology as well and to her belief in the “slow burn” of understanding through time described in Scivias and discussed at length above. It culminates in the g­ reat burst of light at the Incarnation, a burst of light described in “Aue regina celorum.” A ­ fter this new dawn, the light of truth must be repeated and explained in a variety of ways, drawing p ­ eople to its flame one by one u ­ ntil a par­tic­u­lar moment of fullness. M ­ usic in the C area achieves new heights in the play Ordo virtutum, where Hildegard has made several displays that rest on progressions and completion of par­tic­u­lar formulae, especially as in the case of Anima’s progression to spiritual health described above. The musical connections underscore the idea that Hildegard was composing the Scivias chants and the Ordo uirtutum si­mul­ta­ neously. As can be seen in Appendix 4, Hildegard worked like a composing prophet ­toward the tonal area of C two times. This move was foreshadowed even in Section II (see Appendix 4) of the play in the chant “Flos campi,” a piece set in A. However, on the phrase “O uirginitas,” Hildegard provided a taste of what is to come with its emphasis on a rising upward from c and a return to the pitch ornamented with a lower neighbor (Example 7.13). To place it on this par­tic­u­lar word could have meaning. In Section III (Appendix 4) of the play, ­there is a substantial section in C, which references the “Aue regina celorum” through wisps of the characteristic turns of phrase within it. Such m ­ usic breathes with the power of the Virgin Mary, employing the kind of indirect allusions that are also characteristic of references

Ex. 7.13. Pos­si­ble prophetic foreshadowing. R, fol. 480r.

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Ex. 7.14. Victory is defined in C. R, fol. 480.

to source materials in Hildegard’s theological writings. Most prominent in this regard is the speech of the virtue Victory, “Ego uictoria” (Example 7.14). It is an in­ter­est­ing exercise to place points in the melodic tradition of “Aue regina celorum” in counterpoint with this melody, and to indicate some pitches and phrases that seem to make allusions within “Ego uictoria.” In the transcription of “Ego uictoria” ­these collections of notes have been marked by the text in italics where they occur in “Aue regina.” I would be the first to admit that the relationship is somewhat tentative: but I believe it is meant to be a musical foreshadowing of what is to come in the play and in the chants whose texts are found at the close of Scivias. For ­t hose who know both works and can sing them from memory, the references are heard, experienced. Singing in the transposed sixth mode, which produced a final of c, was a signifier to Hildegard. It was a Mariological gesture, and sometimes she is precise about it, and sometimes not. At this point, I repeat a quotation from Peter Dronke concerning how Hildegard’s allegories function in theological texts. I am suggesting musical parallels that are intimately connected to her fundamental ways of working: “Alongside the examples where an allegorical meaning is simply revealed, we have the more dramatic device by which images gradually reveal themselves, by their looks and bearing and language, challenging us to recognize them and infer hidden meanings (even if t­ hese are also confirmed explic­itly at a ­later stage).” 64 Hildegard makes a kind of joke with Patience’s song leading to the C area in Section III with her emphasis on b, the pitch below the final. In order to achieve the fullness of the reference, Anima first must be brought back to health and Satan must be fought and conquered as described above. ­After this has happened the ­battle is set up in Sections IV and V of the play and the C area returns in the Interlude before Section VI (see Appendix 4).



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Interlude and Section VI: The B ­ attle and the Dev­il’s Final Argument The foreshadowing that Hildegard offered in transposed mode 6, an area for her that relates to “Aue regina celorum” and bespeaks the Virgin Mary, reaches its climax in another speech by Victory. The passage leading up to the binding of Satan features several speeches in D, and it can be assumed that Anima sings with the virtues at this point in the play. As they close in on Satan with their D material, t­ here is a l­ittle break of the woeful sound of E, where the virtues, singing to Victory, recollect the harm he has inflicted upon h ­ uman beings, strategically repeating the same ­music (indicated in the play by incipit only) that was sung ­earlier in the strug­gle with Anima. This time Victory w ­ ill achieve even more. Singing in D, Humility charges the virtues to bind Satan, emphasizing the dd–aa fifth; the virtues respond also in D, but making the d to dd octave, completing the charge begun by Humility. But then in what I have called an Interlude Victory appears to do the job, in a burst of C, without warning in the midst of all the D. As can be seen in the example, Hildegard also played with a resonance in a word found in the probable parent chant, “Aue regina celorum” (Example 7.15). ­After Victory’s achievement, the virtues respond, but not as might be expected through a vibrant response in C or even with the triumphant D material that has been prevalent since Anima’s recovery. Their response is the “Laus tibi Christi,” an unlofty line in E, the tonal area often associated in the play with woe and remorse. The setting of this line foreshadows the ending of the play, which is in E, while recollecting a scene from e­ arlier in the play.65 When the virtues first anticipated

Ex. 7.15. Victory over Satan in C, with the word “gaudete” compared to “gaude.”

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Ex. 7.16. Virtues to Anima, still felix, but nearing her moment of fall (opening of the play). R, fol. 478v, compared to the statement at the end of the play, R, fol. 481v.

Anima’s fall, they broke into her initial D with a warning voice that mirrors the “Laus tibi Christi,” singing “O felix anima” (Example 7.16). It is a cele­bration that knows completeness is not yet achieved but that references Christ as the “king of the angels” and so has a taunting message to Satan, just bound in the play (see also Chapter 8). It is a somewhat unusual phrase, and Hildegard clearly chose it for a reason. Satan was himself an angel who wished to hold this place of honor, and now must snarl in his defeat. In fact this melodic line works like a kind of extended and ornamented lower neighbor note, an E that ­will return to the D to follow, introducing Section VI, a kind of coda to the play featuring Chastity and her final argument with Satan. This section is completely lacking in the EV, the playlet at the close of Scivias, one of many indications that the EV was written for a general audience and the OV for female monastics.66 Although Satan has been bound, he remains in the midst of the play’s action in this scene, continuing with challenges to the monastic life. Satan offers his final pronouncement, a direct attack on the practice of celibacy. Just before the final speech, Chastity taunted Satan in the familiar D material with reference to Genesis 3:15 and to the Virgin Mary as the new Eve, who has “trod on his head.” 67 Diabolus, Speech 5 “You ­don’t know what you are nurturing, for your belly is devoid of the beautiful form that w ­ oman receives from man: in this you transgress the command that God enjoined in the sweet act of love; so you d ­ on’t even know what you are.” 68 ­After his speech to her, Chastity surrounds his efforts with more singing in D, creating a kind of musical triumph, with words to match. How dare he accuse



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consecrated virgins of actually being the greatest of sinners! Indeed, this way of life is explained, justified, and glorified by the Incarnation and the model of the Virgin Mary, whose actions produced the Redeemer. In the final song they sing as a group, “O Deus quis es tu” (before the chant “In principio”), the virtues describe the new kinds of angels, t­ hose who have taken Satan’s place and shine now more brightly than he ever did. Th ­ ese are the fallen who ultimately can achieve the heavenly Jerusalem described in Hildegard’s sequence for Rupert. But although this penultimate chant has several of the familiar phrases associated with triumphs in D, ­t hese phrases are transformed in several ways, offering a view of two familiar sounds entwined, filled at once with prophecy, joy, pain, and cosmological significance. The final cadence of “O Deus” is not in D or in C, both associated with vari­ous triumphant actions, but rather t­ rembles on e, and points in this way to the final chant of the play, “In principio.” This last chant makes a major statement about Hildegard’s understanding of ­human action and the turnings of the cosmos, and ­will be studied in Chapter 8.

CHAPTER 8

Endings and Time Beyond Time

Chapters 2 and 3 of this book are about beginnings. This chapter is about endings—of the play, of the treatise Scivias, of time, and of the eternity following ­after time. The final vision of the treatise Scivias is primarily a statement about m ­ usic and the cosmos, with emphasis on three kinds of songs that resound throughout the universe: songs of joy offered by the “citizens of heaven,” the laments calling ­people back from the follies of sin, and the exhortations of the virtues encouraging ­people to break out of the Dev­il’s snares (see also Chapter 7). But it closes with an explication of Psalms 148–150 at the very end. This final vision (Scivias III.xiii), has several sections with the following subjects: Visionary Statement (A) and fourteen Scivias Chant Texts (1–7) Visionary Statement (B) and the Laments (8) Visionary Statement (C) and Exhortatio Virtutum followed by Statement   (D) (9) Exegesis on Visionary Statement A and the Scivias Chants (10–12) Exegesis on Visionary Statements B and C (with a bit of A) (13) Exegesis on Visionary Statement D (14) Exegesis on Praise and on Psalms 148–150 (15–16) Thus the treatise ends by citing texts that exist in notated form elsewhere: the fourteen chant texts, found in Hildgard’s musical works; the shortened textual version of the play, directly related to the Ordo Virtutum (also found in her collected musical works); and the last psalms, 148–150, chanted ­every day at Lauds in the monastic office. The works quoted to close out the treatise lead the reader directly back to the liturgy and to song within community. This knowledge is also crucial for ­t hose who wish to perform the play ­today, and ­t hose who experience this sounded theology. The ending of the sung play especially, when juxtaposed



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with the ending of the treatise, offers a full and rich understanding of how Hildegard was thinking about the cosmos and about end of time at this point in her writing. When the finales of the play and of the treatise are placed side by side, Hildegard’s long exposition on the Eucharist found in Scivias Book II.vi reemerges with intensity and suggests a larger range of meanings for the Ordo virtutum and its pos­si­ble modes of liturgical per­for­mance. The play is central to Hildegard’s views of liturgical action and its direct connections to the cosmos and the turnings of time. This study of the illuminated Scivias leads up, like the play itself, to a final ­great chant, Hildegard’s “In principio omnes,” the culmination of her theological work and her efforts as a composer of liturgical chant. To study this piece in all its several contexts is a unique opportunity to reach into the mind and method of this masterful composer who is also a Doctor of the Church. ­There is no other theologian like Hildegard; t­here is no other chant in her oeuvre like “In principio.” It is the only work which she separated out for pages and pages of exegetical analy­sis in a major treatise, in this case her third major theological treatise, the LDO (see discussion below). The chant is also directly related to her ideas about the cosmos and the end of time, and more profoundly than any ­others of her works. The first three sections of this chapter are devoted accordingly to this final chant of the play Ordo virtutum.

Laments Leading up to “In principio” In Chapter 7, it became clear that Hildegard used musical development in a variety of ways to establish character and to demonstrate change within Anima. The virtues teach her how to regain her initial mode of song in D, m ­ usic with musical roots in the fabulous Jesse tree that is the Church. She used transposed Mode 6, with its final on C as a kind of victory march. But, as discussed above, t­here is another kind of m ­ usic resounding in the cosmos, the sound of lament and sorrow, set mostly in E. ­Here too Hildegard used the m ­ usic of laments (and lamenting sections) to build up to a song of sorrow sung (in the voices of the ­women) by Christ on the cross: “In principio.” One of the chants that sets up the power­f ul lamenting voice of “In principio” is the cry of the entrapped souls, heard at the opening of the play, the melody of which can be found in Corrigan’s edition.1 This text contains several references to “In principio.” The souls wish to respond to the call, but are not strong enough to do so.

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1) O nos peregrine sumus quid fecimus ad peccata deuiantes (O we are strangers; what have we done straying into sin?) 2) filie regis esse debuimus sed in umbra peccatorum cecidimus (We should have been d ­ aughters of the king, but we have fallen into the shadow of sins.) 3) (O uiuens sol porta nos in humeris tuis) O living sun, carry us on your shoulders 4) in iustissimam hereditatem quam in Adam perdidimus (back to that most just heritage we lost in Adam.) 5) O rex regum, in tuo prelio pugnamus. (O king of kings we are fighting in your ­battle.)2 In this introduction to the tonal area of E and its meanings, Hildegard placed much of the ­music in a lower part of the 3rd mode, but expanding its range by dipping down to c, the lower neighbor to d, and so pushed the ­music into the realm of Mode 4. This gesture puts the chant in the Second Maneria, then, as she is using the ranges of both modes 3 and 4. As can be seen in the score in Corrigan’s edition, this is a static melody, trapped right around e, just as ­t hese souls are trapped. The second line is a variation of the first, a shadow of it. Only in the third line does the melody ascend to an ornameted c, for ­here Christ is addressed, “O living son.” The fourth line returns to the melodic work of the first two lines . . . ​trapped again in the fallen state of Adam. H ­ ere the reference is most strongly to line 2. The fifth line of the text regains the hope of line three, once again addressing Christ, but this ­battle cry is hardly persuasive. The virtues continue in this musical strain, lamenting in several places, most notably with the magnificent “O plangens uox” discussed in Chapter 7. The cries of woe found in “O plangens vox” are musical cells of pain, infecting much of the E material in the Ordo virtutum. For example, they call up the cadential formulae characteristic of the lament of the entrapped souls and so bind the two pieces together. The setting of the word “deviantes” (“straying”) in line 1 of the souls’ lament resembles the cry of “ach ach” in “O plangens uox” (see Chapter 7 for the text and ­music). When the virtues cry out concerning Anima’s loss ­later in the play, they also do so in E, and the melodic phrases they use are related to the “ach, ach” of “O plagens uox” just as is the text (see Corrigan, 36; R, fol. 480v): Heu, heu, nos uirtutes plangamus et lugeamus, quia ouis domini fugit uitam! (Woe, woe, let us virtues wail and lament for the master’s sheep has fled this life!)



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It is at the point that Anima reenters the play (see Section IV in Appendix 4), addressing the com­pany of virtues “O you regal virtues” (“O uos regales uirtutes”) and lamenting her many faults in E (see Corrigan, 36–37 and R, fol. 480v). Her sorrow and suffering are deliberately linked musically to e­ arlier laments, but most powerfully to Christ’s lament on the Cross, “In principio.” Most telling is the setting for Christ’s words “ also then you established that your eye would never withdraw . . .” (see example 8.1 below). In Anima’s lament “O uos regales” she too sings the high g on this longing phrase “. . . ​estis in summo sole” (you are in the highest Sun,” and so she is longing for Christ, in texts and in m ­ usic that are near to his own (see Ex. 7.5, discussed in Chapter 7 and the m ­ usic of “In principio below”). Through ­these musical parallels, Hildegard joins Anima’s suffering to that of Christ’s, and once again we witness her masterful use of repeating musical phrases to join texts and make larger meanings, and to use ­music to create theological understanding. “In principio”: Musical Form and Meaning “In Principio” is the ­grand summation of Hildegard’s play, both in its text and in its ­music. Her musical setting of the text relates to the meanings of ­music in E, a lament sung by Christ on the Cross, a magnificent altar call, one suggesting how the play may have functioned within the liturgy as discussed below. Hildegard repeated ­t hese ideas directly in ­others of her compositions (an example of which is brought forth below) and made the ­music resonate with that of “In principio,” “In principio” In the beginning all creation was verdant, flowers blossomed in the midst of it; Afterwards the greenness diminished. And the man, the warrior, saw this decline and said, “I know this, but the golden number is not yet full. You then, look upon the paternal mirror: in my body I suffer exhaustion, for my ­little ones falter. Now be mindful, that the fullness made at the beginning did not have to grow dry, and also then you established that your eye would never withdraw ­until the time that you could see my body covered with jewels.

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Now I am very tired ­because all my limbs are open to mockery. ­Father, look, I hold out my wounds to you.” Therefore now, all you ­people, bend your knees to your ­Father so that he might extend his hand to you.3 The Latin text, divided by musical phrases Part I In principio omnes creature uiruerunt, in medio flores floruerunt;   postea uiriditas descendit. Et istud uir preliator uidit et dixit: “Hoc scio, sed aureus numerus nondum est plenus. Tu ergo, paternum   speculum aspice: in corpore meo fatigationem sustineo, paruuli etiam mei deficiunt.

no. 1 + no. 2 no. 1′ no. 3 no. 4 no. 4′

Part II 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.

Ex. 8.1. “In principio.” R, fol. 481v.

no. 5 no. 6 no. 7 no. 7′ no. 7″ no. 6′ no. 5′

Ex. 8.1. continued

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Hildegard used chains of thirds development in the melody of “In principio,” as is typical of so many of her chants, h ­ ere building primarily from d to f to aa to cc to ee, and e to g to bb to dd (Example 8.2). The melodies are constructed by alternation and interplay between t­ hese two series of thirds. The initial gesture in this phrase moves from an ornamented e, to g, to bb and up the octave to an ornamented ee. However, the descending melisma before the cadence moves from ee to g, and then to interplay on the chain of thirds, g bb dd, with a leap from bb to e, which is elaborately ornamented. Th ­ ere is l­ittle exact quotation from one phrase to another in the melody of the piece as a ­whole; rather, the text unfolds in sections that are related by contours that use similar kernels of melody throughout, expanded and contracted to build relationships between lines, and to refer back to other lamenting sections in the play.

Ex. 8.2. Chains of thirds in the final melisma.

“In principio” forms a summary statement musically of all the laments found in the play and gives the m ­ usic of them to Christ on the Cross. Many of the phrases in “In principio” have been designed with a quick rise upward to allow for long passages of descent in the ­later part of a given line (Example 8.1). This pattern breaks only once, on the line “also then you established that your eye would never withdraw . . .” H ­ ere, at the high point of the chant, the descent found in all the other lines does not occur, giving honor and emphasis to the presence of God’s judging power and the importance of h ­ uman reaction to it (line 6). It is h ­ ere too, and l­ ater in phrase 6’ that the ­music parallels the upper pitches of Anima’s wailing mentioned above (see Ex. 7.5). Christ has taken Anima’s pain on to himself. The long final melisma summarizes the lamenting, beckoning power of the entire chant, and so all the previous laments found in the Ordo virtutum. Hildegard has designed the texts and ­music of the play so that all sorrow is gathered and resolved within the body of Christ; the bloody wounds become jewels. “In principio” laments, exhorts, and suggests the rewards of responding to the call.

Ex. 8.3. The final melisma of “In principio.”



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The final melisma provides an excellent example of alternation between the two poles mentioned above, the most impor­tant counting up from e to ee and returning to e (Example 8.3). ­Here, as more generally in long melismatic passages, Hildegard divides up the motion, avoiding the pitch f in a given group of notes when a bb is involved. In this way she minimizes the tritone. The final melisma is dramatic and emphasizes that God the ­Father extends his hand to ­those who kneel before the Cross and venerate the Son. As this piece would have doubtless been sung by the entire community of nuns, Hildegard has constructed it with ­great numbers of repeating melodic contours, as can be seen in the plan of the work above, which is divided by phrases. It can be ­imagined what power this plea might have had to a community, sung by w ­ omen who have played the part of the helping virtues, including perhaps Hildegard herself, and surely the nun who played the role of Anima. ­Here too, the community ends the play by speaking with the voice of Christ to their audience, whoever it may have been, and the long musical gesture represents the long time during which ­there has been a call to redemption. As described in Scivias II.vi, ­these are consecrated virgins working in modo Christi at the foot of the Cross. In the development of the text and melody of “In principio,” Hildegard made the decision to join this piece with a loose tether to one of her lyr­ics with a similar set of ideas through the use of a common mode and range, as well as some shared musical phrases and contours, as can be seen in Example 8.4. The pieces are closest on the phrases that appear in phrase no. 6 of “In principio,” especially at the m ­ iddle phrase of no. 2 in “O eterne Deus,” as well as the long descending melismas, which are mindful of the final melisma of “In principio.” This musically interrelated lyric is aptly chosen, serving to intensify and expand upon the themes of “In principio,” although the musical parallels are resonances rather than ­actual quotations, as is so often the case as working within Hildegard’s compositional pro­cesses. In “O eterne Deus” (Example 8.4), the plea of the Son found in “In principio” is joined to a plea by the singers: O eternal God, May it please you now, so to burn in love that we may become the limbs you made in the same love when you begot your son in the primal dawn before all creation. Look upon this need

Ex. 8.4. “O eterne deus.” D, fol. 153r.



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that befalls us and lift it from us for the sake of your Son and lead us into the bliss of salvation.4 In this case the supplicant voice asks the F ­ ather to renew the love that inspired creation to begin with, a love of parent for child. And by this love, may the worshippers become the limbs of Christ, ­t hose eternally begotten before the dawn of time. To pair the lyr­ics through subtle musical interconnections in mode and melodic contour demonstrates the exceptional care Hildegard gave to musical settings and that she did sometimes use musical restatement of vari­ous types to link phrases within individual pieces (as we have seen in several examples) but also to relate works whose texts share themes through musical quotation and the design of resonant parallelism. Hildegard treats composition and quotation in the same way she worked with resonances within her theological texts: this is material given to her in visions from on high, and specificity of quotation usually has no place ­here. The listener, like the reader, was to use perceptions and prayer to enter into this time of thinking about and experiencing the divine, learning to become part of Hildegard’s pro­cess of dramatically unfolding allegory.

The Ending of the Ordo virtutum and the Eucharist “In principio” provides a summary of Hildegard’s understanding of the nature and purpose of the cosmos: the redemption of humankind. This mystical poem can be situated within Scivias through several passages related directly to it. In the beginning God made a lush and fertile universe with the blooming, paradisical earth at its center. The life force sustaining it, its viriditas, was blasted by the Fall in the Garden.5 In this text, Christ the Warrior understands the situation and sings that the time to completely restore ­things has not yet arrived: the golden number is not fulfilled, and so meanwhile Christ continues in the same posture, exhausted and waiting on the Cross, showing his wounds on the altar of sacrifice, and pleading for p ­ eople to come to him. If they do, the F ­ ather then w ­ ill extend his hand to them, in opposition to turning his back on them. The p ­ eople need to be supplicant, penitent, as they await this reward. At a first reading, the poem is difficult, especially if it is read out of the context of Hildegard’s treatises. The phrase “quod oculus tuus numquam cederet usque dum corpus meum uideres plenum gemmarum,” for example, seems to mean that

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the all-­k nowing God w ­ ill not stop judging ­people harshly u ­ ntil Christ has come to be sacrificed and his purposes subsequently have been fulfilled by the saving of souls who acknowledge this gift. Why such a message to close out the Ordo virtutum? This “eye” is best defined in Scivias III.xi.36, where Hildegard speaks about the Antichrist and his attacks on Enoch, Elijah, and the Church: “In the righ­teous person, the reflection of the eye of God is a vivid inner dwelling where weariness and misery are not; and God’s eye sees His won­ders in this person like a sword ­eager to strike. But the deeds that come forth like growing fruits from the proud heart, which erects ruins on its pleasures, w ­ ill bring forth only sadness; for the proud heart does not trust in that hope which blossoms in the fullness of Heaven.” 6 Words, phrases, and themes in Scivias and the Ordo virtutum can sometimes be more fully understood when examined in the context of Hildegard’s last major work, the Liber divinorum operum (LDO), which I have argued forms a kind of commentary on Scivias. This is especially true in regard to the chant “In principio.” In the LDO, Hildegard defines God’s eye as “your knowledge that foresees all ­things fully and o ­ rders all t­ hings rightly.”7 God’s eye is one of judgment and it is mirrored inside each person; and each then has the ability to choose between the Dev­il’s prideful offerings in the world or the blossoms of hope that w ­ ill achieve 8 fullness in heaven. In the poem “In principio,” then, it is the Cross, and the jewel-­ like wounds of Christ, that can relieve the pains of this constant judgment through expiation. Accordingly, the poem takes the knowing reader directly back to Scivias I.i (described in Chapter 3), with the “mountain” of choices, and to Scivias II.6, and Christ’s place on the altar, where he is continuing to offer himself, like the Sun that irradiates the Moon, and then ­causes the birthing of stars (described in Chapter 5).9 It is in the Eucharist that Hildegard situates the sacramental actions of heaven and earth in parallel, and it is to the rightful cele­bration of the Eucharist as outlined in Scivias II.vi to which I believe the members of Hildegard’s community are being called at the end of the play Ordo virtutum. The letter Hildegard wrote in protest to the prelates of Mainz near the end of her life proves that the community was accustomed to taking the Eucharist at least once a month: “we have, in accordance with their injunction, ceased from singing the divine praises and from taking the body of the Lord, as had been our regular monthly custom.”10 It is also clear that the sung play Ordo virtutum was an impor­tant work to Hildegard: it was preserved not only in the Riesencodex but also in at least one other copy, and it was also prob­ably at one time part of the now fragmentary musical section of the Dendermonde codex as well. Th ­ ere has been a ­great deal of speculation about the purposes for which the play was written.11 It is a call to penance by a soul that is in need of redemption (as virtually all h ­ uman beings are in Hildegard’s schema). This soul is supported by an entire community urging it to



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make better choices, with the special challenges of the celibate monastic life as a centerpiece in the modes of attack offered by Satan. The play would have provided an apt ceremony for the w ­ omen to engage in at some point in their monthly preparation for the reception of communion. To take communion, recipients would have needed to confess and to perform the penance necessary to partake fully at the t­able, as described by Hildegard in her Eucharistic commentary (Scivias II.vi). I have argued that the play might well have been sung in a pro­cession, with some of the longer chants providing stations, or places of stopping.12 If I ­were summoned to imagine how the play was performed I would say that it was intended to be performed frequently (perhaps even monthly), in a ­ grand costumed pro­ cession, through the vari­ous architectural regions of the monastic complex, and then, at some point, with some sort of motion up to the altar, which would have had a cross above it in the rood screen. All guests would be called to take communion with the community, which prob­ably had its own altar, and to take it with the kinds of understanding outlined in Scivias II.vi. In my interpretation, the play is a sung sermon of well over forty minutes in length, a teaching tool about the sacraments and the cosmic actions involved through and within them. Of course readying the monastic complex for such a use of the play would have been an ongoing enterprise, and one with which Hildegard was deeply engaged as she worked with builders to make appropriate settings for vari­ous communal cele­brations. Working together on the play allowed the w ­ omen a chance to support each other and to engage in horizontal learning (see also Chapter 2 for discussion of this concept). The text of the play and the final chant “In principio” not only emphasize the importance of penance and praise for rightful ac­cep­tance of the sacrament of faith but also raise the subjects of why and how t­ hese actions relate to the cosmos and the unfolding of time and h ­ uman action within it. Christ is waiting, pleading from the Cross for the “golden number” to be achieved. As Hildegard would say, “What does this mean?” She explains it in many ways throughout the course of her treatise, with a kind of summary statement in Scivias III.xi.22 with the heading “When the world is dissolved in the ele­ments, the Church w ­ ill be completed”: “The Church is not yet perfect in her members and her ­children; but on the last day, when the number of the elect is filled up, the Church ­will also be full.”13 The short treatise published among Hildegard’s letters as no. 389 contains further commentary on the work of the saints on a golden altar. The role of ­music is underscored in this description, which has many points of contact with her understanding of the building up of the saints that takes place and that leads to the end times. In this description, the ­music of the angels, of the saints, and of worshippers on earth is joined to the unheard sounds made by the spheres. This pas-

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sage too is crucial for understanding more generally the structure and stance of many of Hildegard’s lyr­ics, so many of which begin with “O” and address the won­ders of par­tic­u­lar saints or categories of saints: The saints and the elect are blessed with liberty, as are also t­hose who, through penitence, return to liberty from the slavery of sin. It is granted to all ­t hese to sound the trumpet, whose m ­ usic echoes before the throne of God [see Apoc. 14:3]. The angels join their voices in harmony to praise God for the works of good p ­ eople still alive in the body, works that constantly multiply and rise up to God “upon the golden altar” [Apoc. 8:3], which stands before Him. They continually sing a new song to God about them. The golden altar is to be understood as the works of the saints, which they did while still abiding in the body and which flash like a golden altar in the sight of God, for by ­t hese works they imitated the Lamb, that is the Son of God. With resounding trumpet, t­ hese saints enumerate their own works and the works of the blessed, who work joyfully, and the sound of that instrument is like “the sound of many w ­ aters” [Apoc. 1:15], intermingled with the most delectable ­music of the encompassing firmament.14 The golden number that Christ awaits on the Cross is the number of the redeemed saints that fill the Church, ­t hose represented cosmically by the stars that are disengorged by the Moon from the irradiating power of the Sun.15 As they are created, the sky accordingly becomes brighter and brighter, more and more golden, as they are reflections of the light of the Sun and members of the body of Christ. Hildegard was doubtless also thinking in her emphasis on this concept of the words from the prophet Ezra, read in the liturgy of All Saints (see also Chapter 3 for the position of this text in the liturgy): “And I said to them: You are the holy ones of the Lord, and the vessels are holy, and the silver and gold, that is freely offered to the Lord the God of our f­athers. [29] Watch ye and keep them, till you deliver them by weight before the chief of the priests, and of the Levites, and the heads of the families of Israel in Jerusalem, into the trea­sure of the ­house of the Lord. [30] And the priests and the Levites received the weight of the silver and gold, and the vessels, to carry them to Jerusalem to the h ­ ouse of our God.” Hildegard’s concept of the golden number, this par­tic­u­lar definition of which seems to be hers alone, rises from this text, which she heard intoned during the eve of her consecration, and ­every All Saints feast thereafter. ­These precious metals are vessels of the altar (see the Rule of St.  Benedict). Their keeping is to be watched and waited for, in the ways the virgins stay awake waiting for the Bride-



Endings and Time Beyond Time 237

groom in Matthew 25. ­Those vessels ­will be carried to Jerusalem, of course, like the souls in the Ordo virtutum, and in Scivias, that ­will be lifted by the virtues to salvation and joining with Christ, whose humanity forms the pillar in a corner of the Edifice of Salvation (Scivias III.viii.13). The fullest context for the chant “In principio” is established by Hildegard in Scivias III.ii.19, where she explains the allegorical meanings of the Edifice of Salvation (see especially Chapter 6). It is clear that the incomplete Christ at the apex of the structure is analogous to the longing, suffering Christ on the Cross who sings in the “In principio” chant at the close of the Ordo virtutum. In her explanation of the requisite golden number, Hildegard used the parable of the lost coin from Luke 15, which we have seen is also referenced in both the EV and the Ordo virtutum: I Humility, queen of the virtues, say: come to me, you virtues, and I’ll give you the skill to seek and find the drachma that is lost and to crown her who perseveres blissfully.16 The Parable of the Lost Coin was interpreted to reference the lost tenth rank of angels, and so also the Fall of Satan, and the long strug­gle of humankind to regain this place in the heavenly heights. Hildegard summarized the pro­cess of loss and reclamation (see also Chapter 4): “Humankind is exceedingly dear to God, Who made ­humans truly in His own image and likeness . . . ​humankind was to exercise all the virtues in the perfection of holiness . . . ​and so to fulfil the function of praise among the more glorious o ­ rders of angels . . . ​in this height of blessedness humankind was to augment the praise of the heavenly spirits who praise God with assiduous devotion, and so fill up the place left empty by the lost angel who fell in his presumption.”17 Hildegard was always careful to deny to h ­ umans the powers of divination, most emphatically in Scivias I.iii, where she warns against astrology and ­human attempts to predict the ­future. So too in her discussion of the number of the elect who ­will be saved (the golden number) she speaks of the impossibility of knowing where the elect dwell and how many of them ­there are and w ­ ill be (Scivias III.i.8). Still the actions of God are a revolving circle that in time w ­ ill be complete, and the cir­cuit of the w ­ hole w ­ ill finish: “When in God’s foreordained time His work ­shall have been completed in the ­people of this world, then the cir­cuit of the world w ­ ill have been made, and the perfection of time and the last day w ­ ill arrive; and then each work of God, seated in his throne without end, w ­ ill shine resplendent in His elect.”18 In Hildegard’s understanding, the end of creation and of time depends upon actions that take place on earth, that blood-­soaked battleground where the forces of

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good and evil have met since the Fall of Lucifer. Although the all-­knowing God is well aware of when and how the end w ­ ill come, and that the timing of it depends upon the completion of the golden number, ­humans can never know the day or time that the last person ­will be saved. But at that point Christ ­will leave the Cross and sit upon the throne of judgment (see too 2 Thess. 1). The minutes of time remaining to the universe, then, are counting down, as the elect are numbered, saved soul by saved soul, this the epic action of the play Ordo virtutum. Hildegard refines her understanding of the “golden number” in the LDO. By the time her third and last treatise was written, the chant “In principio omnes,” the final ­music of the play, had become a major touchstone for her theological exegesis and, I believe, for liturgical action within her community. She quoted the text of this chant in its entirety in LDO III.v.8, and then spent much of this final part of her last treatise expounding upon its meanings. I believe that the play and the treatise Scivias are so closely interconnected that she must have written them together. But she did not stop with t­ hose materials; h ­ ere, as in so many ways, Scivias provided the foundation for what was to come. The text of “In principio omnes” and its content continued to m ­ atter a g­ reat deal to Hildegard, so much so that the poem becomes a linchpin connecting the Ordo virtutum to her last theological treatise as well, the LDO, continuing to make the sung play an integral part of her entire campaign. In this final treatise Hildegard treated the text of “In principio” sentence by sentence, expounding it with the care given to Scripture by a sentence commentator. The meanings that can be extrapolated from Scivias in vari­ous sections concerning the chant are expressed directly in commentary found in the LDO. For example, in explaining the wounds referenced in the chant she says, in persona Christi: “So now, all you ­people who desire to abandon the ancient serpent and return to your Creator: notice that I, the Son of God and Man, show my wounds to my ­Father on your behalf. So then, in the purity of faith, bend your knees—­which you have so often bowed to the vanity of wicked contradiction—to your ­Father, who created you and who gave you the breath of life. Confess your sins fully from the heart” (LDO III.v.8, p. 475). Shortly a­ fter this, Hildegard explained that the Son’s wounds w ­ ill stay open as long as humankind remains sinning in the world. Instead of the golden number seemingly applying to all the saints, as in the stand-­a lone passage at the end of the OV, the refined meaning as expressed in the LDO puts g­ reat emphasis on the martyrs, both t­ hose who w ­ ere killed in the early Church and t­ hose whom Hildegard believed would suffer in the persecution of Christians at the end of time: “Then, as said above, the golden number of the blessed martyrs who ­were slain for the true



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faith in the early Church w ­ ill be brought to the fullness of its perfection with ­t hose martyrs who ­will be slain in the error of the end time” (LDO III.v.33, p. 472). Hildegard’s belief, expressed in Scivias III.11, that the Anti-­Christ would rule for a thousand years of suffering was expressed again in the LDO in even greater detail, and “In principio omnes” was impressed into the ser­vice of this theme. The ways the chant text was reused in the LDO are quite dif­fer­ent from how it appears in the OV, as a summation and call to the t­ able of the altar. Yet in both instances, the action described in the chant’s text underlies Hildegard’s beliefs about the connections between ­human action and the ongoing turnings of the cosmos. The extended hand reached out to ­people in this final act of the sung play is that described in Scivias III.x.6: “But some who should have sought Me out before they fell, seek Me, sighing and sorrowing, ­after they fall, and to them I offer my hand.” Hildegard used Scivias III.x as a call to accept the divine hand before her chapters on the final judgment and the end of time that close Scivias.19 This chapter of Scivias situates the end of the Ordo virtutum, and integrates it into the treatise, as does Hildegard’s setting of the mystical close of the play, an open-­ended drama depending on h ­ uman choice, and relating as well to the importance of the altar and the rightful ac­cep­ tance of the Eucharist. That the folios containing the final materials form a separate section even to manuscript W encourages speculation about the state of the play as a separate entity that had multiple copies used for per­for­mance. The same is true of R, where the ­music folios form a separate section. ­There must have been specialized libelli on the Rupertsberg for Hildegard’s chants and for the play.

The Cosmos Disintegrates Although the end of the Ordo virtutum is a call to the participants to become one with the golden number of saints, the ending of the treatise Scivias explains both the ongoingness of the call and then too what ­will happen once the call has been heeded the requisite number of times and the golden number is achieved. In this ending, Hildegard had depicted a set of images that offer understanding of the end of the ordered universe, as well as a view of what it might look like and sound like a­ fter the Apocalypse. Of course, it was related directly to the circumstances before evil infected the cosmos; t­ here would be a new creation, one that involved saints created during their time on earth. The narrative begins in Scivias III.x, with a painting that zooms in on the very apex of the Edifice of Salvation (Scivias III.ii). (See Figure 6.5 in Chapter 6 and

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Plate XV.) In this detail, the incomplete Christ can be seen, giving a gesture of blessing with his right hand and holding a scroll in the other. The steps leading up to him are seven, and Christ sits upon this altar. This painting references ideas described in Scivias II.vi, for it is on the communion altar that God the ­Father makes a memorial to God the Son: “Hear then o h ­ uman! As long as you need help, and as long as you can succor o ­ thers, My Son’s Passion w ­ ill appear before Me in mercy, and His body and blood ­will be received on the altar to be received by believers for their salvation and the purgation of their crimes. . . . ​For what­ever my Son suffered physically in His body for the redemption of humanity appears when the oblation is consecrated; and my ­w ill is not to hide this” (see also Chapter 5).20 And then, at the close of Scivias III.xi, time ends, and with it both the persecutions of Satan and the deeds of h ­ uman virtue. The long-­term b ­ attle is over, and each person has made choices through acts of the ­will, inspired by the virtues. Introducing Scivias III.xii, Hildegard describes her vision of the violent transformation of the created geocentric universe when the last of the elect in the golden number has been saved as a result, and the day of judgment arrives: “­After this I looked, and behold, all the ele­ments and creatures ­were shaken by dire convulsions; fire and air and w ­ ater burst forth, and the earth was made to move, lightening and thunder crashed and mountains and forests fell, and all that was mortal expired. And all the ele­ments ­were purified, and what­ever had been foul in them vanished and was no more seen.”21 The tempestuous nature of the end of time inspired one of the most spectacular of the paintings found in Wiesbaden 1, that for Scivias III.xii, fol. 225r, a depiction of the cosmic cataclysm (see Figure 8.1 and Plate XVI). This painting incorporates many ele­ments used elsewhere in the treatise, combining them into a visual statement about the Apocalypse, showing the ­great amount of planning that was used to create ­these intervisual effects. At the top of the painting, the figure of Christ, looking very much as he does at the apex of the Edifice of Salvation (Plate XV), now appears w ­ hole, a sign that his body is complete, and so at that moment he has come to judge. This is a picture of Christ just before he moves ­toward the throne. At this moment the shofar sounds, Enoch and Elijah appear, and all the ele­ments disintegrate. The windheads that Hildegard placed so carefully in balance in her map of the cosmos in Scivias I.iii turn upon each other, their forces fully released. The moment has arrived; the golden number has been fulfilled. The painting has two zones in its core, both of which are expressed in roundels. At the top is a Christ in majesty. Although the figure represents the completed Body of Christ, found at the apex of the Edifice of Salvation in Scivias, it also may be referencing the chant “In principio.” In this chant, Christ calls to

Fig. 8.1. The End of Time. Scivias III.xii, from W, fol. 225r.

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­ eople as he displays his wounds to the ­Father, and ­here, at the last moment of p time, Christ is in an orans position, the wounds in his hands clearly vis­i­ble and ­t hose of his feet as well. To ­either side, believers, saints, and angels hold instruments of the Passion, on the viewer’s left the spear, and on the right a reed scepter for holding the sponge.22 Below, on the right hand of Christ, are ­those who believed, and are pleading, saved in ac­cep­tance, and bound by a golden ribbon; on the left are t­ hose persuaded by Satan over time and trapped for eternity. Once the last person among the golden number has been acknowledged, the judgment has come. For all ­t hese groups, ­t here is no longer time to change: choices have been made, the saga is ended. Hildegard has taken her views of the Eucharist and the choices it demands and given them cosmic implications. How each person lived day by day, and especially how each related to the altar, has driven not only the salvation of souls but also the nature and timing of the end of the universe. According to Apoc. 7, the winds are extreme forces of nature, restrained from ­doing harm by angels, “till we sign the servants of our God in their foreheads.”23 In Hildegard’s Scivias III.xii, that moment in time has come, and the last servant has been signed.24 The unrolled scroll held by the shofar-­blowing angel serves as a line to divide the saved from the unsaved; the figure of Christ is surrounded by unrolled scrolls as well. In the lower roundel, the fury of the winds has been unleashed as the cosmos disintegrates. The windheads that ­were arrayed in the Cosmic Egg in balance ­here blow in each other’s ­faces. The colors and locations of the windheads are true to ­those found in the painting for Scivias I.iii, allowing the viewer to identify each. But in this ­later painting, each windhead has been turned so that the airstreams all blow to the center. It is an extraordinary image, and t­ here is r­ eally nothing e­ lse like it known to me. It also provides yet another demonstration of the ways in which Hildegard created interrelationships between the paintings that I believe she designed to create a larger statement about the cosmos, time, and eternity. Overlaying the furious last blasts of the windheads are streams representing the four ele­ments—­earth, air, ­water, and fire—­which are ceasing in their distinctiveness and instead mingling, and in this pro­cess creating something new by a reordering of all ­matter. “Before the Fall of Adam, the heavens ­were immovable and did not turn, but ­after the Fall, they gradually started to spin. On the Last Day they w ­ ill again come to rest, as it was at the beginning before the Fall.”25 Hildegard was obsessed (I think not too strong a word) with the state of the cosmos and with time before the Fall of humankind and its vari­ous properties. In her understanding of the nature of the cosmos ­there would be, a­ fter the apocalypse, a kind of return to a pristine state and to God’s original plan for h ­ umans as members of the angelic host, singing praises throughout eternity. Time would



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cease, and so too would the motion of the planets with their turnings. Hildegard wrote about, but did not depict, the freezing of the planets and the ­great light that she believed would then flood the universe. She described her view of this eternal brilliance in the preface to Scivias III.xii: “And when the judgment was ended, the lightnings and thunders and winds and tempests ceased, the fleeting components of the ele­ments vanished all at once, and t­ here came an exceeding g­ reat calm. . . . ​ And the sun, moon and stars sparkled in the firmament like g­ reat ornaments, remaining fixed and not moving in orbit, so that they no longer distinguished day from night. And so t­ here was no night, but day. And it was finished.”26 Hildegard’s view is as reflected in Apoc. 22:1–5, wherein is found a similar view of the end of time, with the calm light irradiating the w ­ hole. The sparkling ­waters and the flourishing plant in the m ­ iddle of the w ­ hole are images of major importance for the lyr­ics at the close of Scivias discussed below: “And he shewed me a river of ­water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. [2] In the midst of the street thereof, and on both sides of the river, was the tree of life, bearing twelve fruits, yielding its fruits e­ very month, and the leaves of the tree w ­ ere for the healing of the nations. [3] And t­here s­ hall be no curse any more; but the throne of God and of the Lamb s­ hall be in it, and his servants s­ hall serve him. [4] And they s­ hall see his face: and his name ­shall be on their foreheads. [5] And night ­shall be no more: and they ­shall not need the light of the lamp, nor the light of the sun, b ­ ecause the Lord God s­ hall enlighten them, and they s­ hall reign for ever and ever.”

The Final Painting and References to All Saints The painting designed for the final vision described in Scivias III.xiii is based on both the general themes of the Feast of All Saints and more particularly the first eight responsories for the feast. The texts for all ­t hese chants are found in Appendix 3. As can be seen in T ­ able 8.1, the first eight responsories for the feast have been borrowed from other places in the liturgy, especially from the Common of the Saints. The chants found in the Common of the Saints w ­ ere one of the most impor­tant features of the medieval liturgy in the Latin West, and some ­were regularly borrowed to augment the All Saints feast. A feast such as that for John the Baptist, for example, would have a set of responsories and other chants for the Mass and Office proper to his cele­bration, and as can be seen, one of ­t hese chants was borrowed for use in the All Saints feast in Engelberg 103. But the vast majority of saints in the ever-­expanding medieval calendar did not have proper chants, or

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­ able 8.1. Responsories for the Feast of All Saints, and the Common of the Saints or feast T from which the first eight ­were borrowed All Saints

Liturgical source

Incipit

Responsory 1 Responsory 2 Responsory 3 Responsory 4 Responsory 5 Responsory 6 Responsory 7 Responsory 8 Responsory 9 Responsory 10 Responsory 11 Responsory 12

Trinity (Trinity) Virgin Mary (Nativity, BVM) Angels (St. Michael) John the Baptist (John the Baptist) Apostles (Apostles) Martyrs (Martyrs) Confessors (Confessors) Virgins (Virgins) Proper to All Saints Proper to All Saints Proper to All Saints Proper to All Saints

Benedicamus patrem et filium Felix namque es, sancta Virgo Maria Te sanctum dominum in excelsis Inter natos mulierum Qui sunt isti Isti sunt viri Sint lumbi vestri Simile est regnum caelorum Laudem dicite deo nostro Beati estis sancti dei omnes Beati qui persecutionem patiuntur Beati pauperes spiritu

SOURCE: Engelberg 103. The first eight; the last four are proper to All Saints.

at least did not have a full complex of dedicated chants. For ­t hese, cantors reached into the Common, and into the Proper category for that saint, and picked and chose from what was available in their community’s books and repertory. The responsories for the Feast of All Saints exemplify how this pro­cess worked, for, as can be seen, the first eight responsories have been borrowed. Several are proper chants for other feasts or from common chants. For example, the responsory for the Virgin Mary “Felix namque es” has been borrowed in this manuscript from the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin (September 8), whereas the responsory for martyrs, “Isti sunt viri,” was borrowed from Common of Martyrs and “Sint lumbi vestri” for Confessors was borrowed from the Common chants for Confessors. The reuse of chants in this way connected the Feast of All Saints to the unfolding of the church year and to several of the feasts found for the saints throughout it. When the Common of the Saints was drawn upon, even more saints ­were drawn into the fold through the sharing of t­ hese familiar chants. As the responsories of All Saints pre­sent such an array of borrowed and proper chants, they do not form a modally ordered set, as do the responsories of many offices composed from the eleventh c­ entury forward. The final four responsories w ­ ere proper to the All Saints Office itself. ­These relate directly to the Gospel of the day from Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. ­ ere utterly recast, for this The roundels of Creation depicted in Scivias II.i are h is a new creation, a redeemed universe ­after the golden number has been achieved and time and motion have ceased (see Plate XIV).27 As can be seen, t­ here are seven



Endings and Time Beyond Time 245

roundels in the painting, and each is a porthole in a gold, silver, and blue wall through which, in some cases, the stars of the heavens can be viewed. The saints, represented in the order found in the responsories of All Saints Day, are looped with scrolls, binding them to the Word. The gazes of the saints are varied, and in most cases directed ­toward a major figure within the select category where they dwell and where they sing their praises.28 At the topmost of the array, and in her own medallion, is the Virgin Mary in majesty, holding an orb in her right hand and a silver lily in her left; she is ­here the Queen of Heaven, and “most worthy of praise,” as she is in “Felix namque,” the responsory assigned to her on the Feast of All Saints. She resembles the figure of Humility too, who is the Queen of the Virtues in the Ordo virtutum and who is depicted in the painting for Scivias III.viii. Her cosmic properties are emphasized in the responsory: “for from you is risen the sun of justice.”29 The connections between the themes of the Ordo virtutum and the Scivias chants are many, and Hildegard juxtaposed the chant texts and the truncated version of the play to clarify the relationship between the saints of the liturgy and the virtues of the play (both versions) and the treatise. The saints of the chant texts embody the qualities allegorized by the virtues, as was seen in discussion of the Rupert sequence in Chapter 3. As with the responsories, the angels follow ­a fter the Virgin Mary in the painting. In their roundel some of the angels are winged but ­others are not. This provides further evidence that we are gazing at a depiction a­ fter the end of time, post judgment and ­after the apocalypse. ­Human beings have joined the ranks of the angels, a place that God originally assigned to them. Five roundels below Mary and the angelic hosts provide views of the categories of saints celebrated on the Feast of All Saints, especially through responsories chosen from other more particularized feasts. In the responsories, John the Baptist follows ­after the Virgin Mary, and so too does he ­here, standing amid the prophets and patriarchs in the first of the lower set of five roundels to the left. His painting references the statement “Behold the Lamb of God.” A red beam travels from the Lamb above him to his eye, as he instructs the ­others grouped around him. In Scivias II.i, Hildegard connected the Baptist to the prophets, as is the case in this roundel: “This is the greatest prophet, John the Baptist, who glittered with miracles in his faithful and serene deeds, and pointed out by their means the true Word.”30 Except for the painting of Mary, all the roundels contain groups, emphasizing the theme of the Common of the Saints, chants for representative groups. To the viewer’s right are the Apostles, with Peter in the center holding his keys. Accordingly, the responsory for Apostles follows next on All Saints as well. As with the ranks of angels, which do not number nine or ten, the Apostles do not

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number twelve ­here, the numerical correspondence not being exact. The responsory chosen to honor the Apostles on the Feast of All Saints was borrowed from Common for the Apostles. The chant “Qui sunt isti [or hi]” was referenced also in the play Ordo virtutum by the singing of the prophets and patriarchs.31 In the painting, Hildegard has placed the Patriarchs and Prophets with the Baptist, in the same row as with the Apostles, linking them visually, as she did through the singing of an Apostles’ chant by the prophets in the Ordo virtutum. The row below ­these features two groups of saints: Martyrs to the left and Confessors to the right. In the left-­hand painting of this row, a man holds a palm, the symbol of martyrdom, in his right hand and an orb in his left hand. Other male martyrs look on, and Hildegard’s choices may have been influenced by the chant for Martyrs sung on All Saints in her region, “Isti sunt uiri,” “­these are men.” The painting of Confessors on the right references the paintings of the altar accompanying Scivias II.vi. The priest on the viewer’s right in this roundel has veiled his hands to touch the Gospel book more rev­er­ent­ly, and he gazes at the Church, who is crowned, and holds the cross marked with blood, this too leading back to Scivias II.vi and its Eucharistic commentary. In the center of the lower roundels, Hildegard gives pride of place to the Virgins, some of whom are also virgin martyrs, for one holds a palm. The responsory for virgins is the last in the group of particularized saints celebrated on All Saints’ Day, and ­here this final position (the last in the second nocturn) is reflected too in the location of the painting. To join the themes of martyrdom and virginity in this roundel relates to Hildegard’s description of virginity in Scivias II.v.6: she is “the noble ­daughter of celestial Jerusalem, the glory and honor of ­t hose who have shed their blood for love of virginity or in radiant humility preserved their virginity for the sake of Christ and died sweetly in peace.”32 This painting for ­after the end of time provides a view of the cosmos a­ fter the apocalypse by concentrating on ­humans, as indeed Hildegard has in ­every stage of understanding the nature of the universe and its purpose.

The Painting and the Scivias Chants Hildegard incorporated fourteen of her chant texts into Scivias III.xiii (­Table 8.2).33 Her choices create yet another link to the Feast of All Saints and also serve as further inspirations for the painting that accompanies Scivias III.xiii. Of all the examples one can find for the ways Hildegard uses the liturgy, the art she designed, her lyr­ics, her dramatic sense, and her ­music to make a radiating nexus of



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­Table 8.2. Scivias chants A = antiphon; R = responsory. Incipit

Genre/subject

Tonal area

O splendidissima gemma O tu suauissima O gloriosissimi lux O uos angeli O spectabiles uiri O uos felices radices O cohors milicie O lucidissima O uictoriosissimi Vos flores rosarum O successores O uos imitatores O pulchre facies O nobilissima uiriditatis

A/BVM R/BVM A/Angels R/Angels A/Patriarchs, prophets R/Patriarchs, prophets A/Apostles R/Apostles A/Martyrs R/Martyrs A/Confessors R/Confessors A/Virgins R/Virgins

E D transposed E E E E G G E F transposed D F transposed E F transposed

meaning, this is the most all-­encompassing. The multilayered group of materials at the end of Scivias may be the most readily graspable as well, although like the other complexes of interdisciplinary meanings she created, it is also exceedingly complicated. The chant texts included in Scivias III.xiii are fourteen in number, seven pairs, each comprising an antiphon and a responsory, and dedicated ­either to the Trinity or to a category of saint, as are the responsories of All Saints’ Day and the paintings of Scivias III.xiii. The chants are also presented in the same order as are the saints, both in the responsories of All Saints and in the painting, with the Virgin Mary first, then the angels, and so forth. As the ending of the treatise is deliberately synchronized with the opening of the book, and with many of the themes advanced within it, it seems most probable that Hildegard wrote t­hese chants during the de­cade during which she wrote the treatise, the same as she apparently did with the play Ordo virtutum.34 The themes of Fall, Penance, and Redemption found in the OV and the EV are also prominent in ­t hese chant texts. Hildegard’s Scivias chants ­were created at the interstices between the well-­ known responsories for All Saints and her ideas about the meanings of the Feast of All Saints for her par­tic­u­lar community of religious ­women. The paintings drew their meanings from both the traditional liturgy and Hildegard’s new liturgical statements, and their cosmic implications, not just for the Rupertsberg community but for all Christians. As t­hese chants and their texts w ­ ere integrated

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within Hildegard’s first major theological work, they became foundational for the ­whole of her musical oeuvre. Understanding their theological sense, both in their texts and in their m ­ usic, is crucial to knowing the meanings of the entirety. Hildegard’s ­music reads symbolically and on many levels. The more one sings it, the more convinced one becomes of the many resonances buried within it. With ­t hese fourteen chants, Hildegard provided a set of pieces for the Common of the Saints, and ones that therefore could be sung throughout the year, and multiple times. If this is indeed the case, her most cherished theological themes would have been in play throughout the year, and then might have been utilized on All Saints as well, potentially giving that day a set of Hildegard’s greatest hits. ­W hether or not the ­women of the Rupertsberg actually made ­t hese substitutions in their liturgical practices can never be known. It was their Office and they could have done so if they wished, knowing the original chants as well, too, as they would have grown up with them. Th ­ ere seems to have been deliberate interplay between the chants that w ­ ere assigned to representative categories of saints on All Saints’ Day as found in Engelberg 103 and Hildegard’s own set of chants for the Common of the Saints. Of all of Hildegard’s chants, this deliberately or­ga­nized group was the most likely to have been used regularly in the liturgy. Like so much ­else in her theological oeuvre, this group assigns pride of place to consecrated virgins and their hagiographic models.35 Many connections can be made between art, m ­ usic, and liturgy through closer study of the texts of t­ hese Scivias chants. The texts, too, advance a theme explored in ­great detail in Scivias III.viii, the flowering branch of Jesse, an image that Hildegard expanded upon and transformed in her exegesis (see Chapters 5 and 7) and one that magnifies the vitality and centrality of female religious to the work of the Church. This idea is also prominent in the Ordo virtutum, a play that creates a kind of sonic Stirps Jesse. The Scivias chants deserve a book-­length study of their own, and justice cannot be done to them in this overview. My goal is to provide a theological summary of ­t hese chants, situating them deeply within the themes of Scivias itself and also demonstrating some connections between ­t hese chants and the texts and ­music of the Ordo virtutum. The cosmology of Scivias is reflected both in the play and in ­t hese chants. Through Hildegard’s integrated package of materials, the Rupertsberg ­women could embody Hildegard’s views concerning the epic journey of the soul in ­every per­for­mance within their liturgical practice and especially in the cele­bration of vari­ous categories of saints throughout the entire year, a cele­ bration that would have culminated in the recollections of November  1, All Saints’ Day.



Endings and Time Beyond Time 249

Chants for a New Creation Hildegard’s first Scivias chant, “O splendidissima gemma” for the Virgin Mary, is studied in Chapter 4 for its relationship to the act of creation and the power­ful joining of the Virgin to the Sun, which is the star representing Christ.36 As can be seen in the responsory featured for All Saints, this relationship is also expressed in terms of the brilliant light that rises from Mary’s incarnate body. The Virgin Mary is a representative of the Church, and in the cosmos both are allegorized by the Moon, which reflects the light and energy of the Sun.37 In this antiphon, the Virgin Mary’s body has become the new material for a new creation. In the first half of the lyric, God speaks to Eve through the creative power of the Word, and the primal m ­ atter teems with life. In the second part, God speaks “again.” This time the m ­ atter created by the Word breathes forth virtues, the ideas that w ­ ill inspire redemption. Hildegard has chosen this poem to begin the act of re-­creation described in the Scivias chants, a re-­creation that is also depicted in the accompanying painting. In the responsory Hildegard wrote for Mary in this set, “O tu suauissima uirga,” Hildegard turned a common idea inside out.38 ­Here the eye of the ea­gle that stares into the Sun, a conceit often used to express the ability of the mystic to see God, becomes the eye of God: God stares like an ea­gle at the beauty of the Virgin, which blazes with light.39 But Hildegard went far beyond ­these connections by linking the text of this responsory both to Scivias III.viii and to the Ordo virtutum. References to the flowering branch are clear, making this fundamental image resound in song. Hildegard described Mary in this responsory as the “sweetest branch” that buds from Jesse’s stock: “For in the mystical mystery of God, the Virgin’s mind was illumined, and a wondrously bright flower came forth from that Maid.” 40 When God gazed on her beauty, He saw the entire created world with her as the most astounding ele­ment, and saw that it was good. Both of t­ hese opening chants for the Virgin Mary are rooted in the imagery of the Sun streaming through and in the virginal flesh to make a new creation at the moment of Incarnation. In this lyric the Virgin’s comprehension of divine meaning is what makes cosmic transformation pos­si­ble; she embodies the virtue Knowledge of God. The paintings are about time a­ fter time; so too the texts of the chants celebrate renewal in stages, beginning with the new life given to all creation through Mary’s brilliant moment of understanding.41 Hildegard’s two chants for the angelic hosts are both in E, as are her paired chants for the Patriarchs and prophets that follow.42 The antiphon for angels, “O gloriosissimi,” is discussed in Chapter 4 with complete text and ­music (see Example

250 Chapter 8

4.4). In the pair of chants for the angels, Hildegard relived the Fall at the beginning of creation in the antiphon; the joys of the ranks of angels who did not follow Satan resound in the melody of the responsory, a complicated work that offers a unique melodic statement for most of the nine ranks.43 In the chant texts for patriarchs and prophets, John the Baptist is featured as the last of prophets, as he is in the roundel for patriarchs and prophets in the painting for Scivias III.xiii, another connection that Hildegard made through her strategy of interplay between the visual, the poetic, and the musical. ­Because all four chants are in E, Hildegard was able to interweave their musical settings, including shared opening notes between “O gloriosissimi,” the antiphon for the angels, and the antiphon for patriarchs and prophets, “O spectabiles uiri.” ­These are the groups of creatures that are the most ancient in time; the angels are ­those who stayed with God from the beginning of Genesis, Day 1; the prophets and patriarchs are the “holy ones of old,” t­ hose p ­ eople who continued to believe a­ fter the Fall and before the Incarnation. The responsories Hildegard composed for both groups are marked by spectacular descending scalar passages, used to mark the beauty of God’s natu­ral creation through images that have been developed in the treatise and the play as well: the light with its shadows and the gushing ­water of the fountain that flows from the paternal heart. Responsories written in honor of the saints in offices from the central M ­ iddle Ages are frequently characterized by the use of long, descending melismatic passage to underscore impor­tant words in the texts. Hildegard knew this tradition and a­ dopted it for her own chants, but she often exceeded the norm in the ranges of her melismatic passagework, especially in responsories. Although Hildegard’s antiphons and responsories generally are overrun with melismas, the degree to which the passages descend for octaves and more is especially emphasized in the set of chants she composed for the Scivias texts. As would be expected, Hildegard employed this technique to underscore words of par­tic­u­lar importance. In the responsory for the angels, who can see in the fountain the ­little place of God’s ancient heart, the phrase “you see in the fountain” is melismatized dramatically with torrents of descending notes.44 This same technique is used in the responsory for the patriarchs and prophets, whose work is described as “a rushing course of translucent shadow.” ­Here Hildegard’s torrents of notes are found on the word “torrens” itself. She referenced several dif­fer­ent scales in ­these E-­mode chants, making a sonic landscape that rings with all the sounds of the modes, and one that is unique in her repertory for its spectacular use of many tonal areas in several ranges, for the angels proclaim Christ as they gaze upon the Godhead (Example 8.5). In the two chants for the patriarchs and prophets, ­t hese groups of saints become the roots of the g­ reat plant, one that w ­ ill bud with miracles, with the saints



Endings and Time Beyond Time 251

Ex. 8.5. From the responsory for angels (“in fonte aspicitis”: you behold in the fountain). R, fol. 468v.

and with Mary and her Son. With t­hese images, Hildegard joins the subjects of ­t hese two chants for patriarchs and prophets to the patriarchs and prophets who gaze upon the virtues at the opening of the Ordo virtutum, and to the long chant “O uiuens fons,” which features in the play.45 This is one of the many ways that the fourteen Scivias chants are linked to the play, as they are to the paintings, and to meanings of the treatise as a ­whole, joined ­here through the use of multiple images that reflect the meanings of Scripture, of the liturgy, and of Hildegard’s own writings and artistic designs. Like the text itself, the many dimensions of understanding require a kind of decoding that would have been offered to the members of Hildegard’s community alone. Barbara Newman says, for example, of the antiphon for prophets and patriarchs, “O spectabiles uiri”: “In this antiphon Hildegard achieves the cryptic intensity of a Blake or a Mallarmé by using her semi-­private symbols as if they ­were common currency. . . . ​In some of her lyr­ics, her mode of expression is closer to what Coleridge called symbolism rather than allegory. Yet, like the latter, it lends itself readily to a kind of interpretation that verges on decoding, with Scripture and monastic liturgy as the code books.” 46 In the responsory of the set for patriarchs and prophets, Hildegard cascaded down the scales of E and D, weaving t­hese favored areas together into a single musical statement, one that includes the scale of C as well, the transposed sixth mode that Hildegard favored in many of her Marian chants and in the Ordo virtutum as well. ­These happy roots contain the essence of Hildegard’s musical enterprise, but in a lower range than utilized in the responsory for the angels cited above. The “torrens” in the tonal area of E from the responsory for patriarchs and prophets “O uos felices radices” (“O you happy roots”) is dramatic as well, although

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Ex. 8.6. From the responsory for Patriarchs and Prophets. R, fol. 469r (through the rushing way).

Ex. 8.7. From the responsory for Apostles “O lucidissima apostolorum turba.” R, fol. 469v.

less spectacularly so than the ranges found in the melisma at the heart of the angels’ responsory (Example 8.6). In the pair of chants for the Apostles Hildegard continued to underscore the themes she chose for the lyr­ics discussed above.47 The antiphon “O cohors militie” fuses this band of men into the flowering branch of the Jesse plant through the opening lines: “O legion of the army of the flower of the branch without thorns: you are the voice of the ­whole world.” 48 In the responsory, imagery of light established early in this set of lyr­ics continues, as found also in the responsory for All Saints dedicated to apostles, “Qui sunt isti.” This chant is alluded to in the opening of the Ordo virtutum, through both textual and musical quotation. Hildegard’s responsory “O lucidissima apostolorum turba” is saturated with the powers of baptismal ­waters, with a long melisma on “abluendo” (“washing”).49 Yet another magnificent melisma in this chant emphasizes the scale from gg to g on the text “you are the most brilliant light,” a reference to the cosmic power of the Sun (Example 8.7). The floral imagery that binds many of the Scivias lyr­ics together appears in a dif­fer­ent guise in Hildegard’s Scivias chants for Martyrs. H ­ ere this category of saints is characterized as blood-­soaked roses on the tree of life. This understanding is foundational for Hildegard’s magnificent chants written ­later for the feast of St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins.50 As in Scivias and ­here, Hildegard fused her understanding of martyrs with that of virgins and virginity, as she did too in the roundel for virgins depicted above, which includes a female martyr holding a palm. In Hildegard’s responsory “Vos flores rosarum” (“you flowers of roses”), the blood of the martyrs flows into the stream that issues from the Crucified, and the



Endings and Time Beyond Time 253

Ex. 8.8. Final melisma from the responsory “Vos flores” for martyrs. R, fol. 470r.

Ex. 8.9. From the responsory for confessors. R, fol. 470v.

long final melisma is set to the text describing him as the creative force that had no beginning and has no end (Example 8.8). Hildegard’s roundel in the painting for Scivias III.xiii shows the confessors as priests of the altar in the bottom right. To the viewers’ left, a priest in full regalia ­handles the Gospel book by keeping his robe between the book and his touch. He looks across at the crowned Ecclesia who holds in her hands the bleeding cross, with its Eucharistic imagery, as found in Scivias II.vi. In the responsory for Confessors sung on the Feast of All Saints, the men are servants at the wedding feast of the Lamb from Apoc. 19, making the connection found in the painting.51 And so in Hildegard’s antiphon, too, the Confessors serve the Lamb, crossing between ­temple and altar and d ­ oing their work while the angels sing:52 “O successors of the most mighty lion, between ­temple and altar, you are lords in his ser­vice. As the angels resound in praise and assist the p ­ eoples with their aid, you stand among them who do t­ hese t­ hings, always taking pains in the ser­vice of the Lamb” (Example 8.9).53 Hildegard designed the lyric so that the final word, Lamb, receives the melismatic emphasis, a long scalar descent through the tonal area of D (in the ser­vice of the Lamb). In this complex of materials, the painting, the All Saints responsory, and Hildegard’s lyrical composition play off each other, deepening meaning. Hildegard’s two chants for virgins finish out the set of fourteen chant texts found in Scivias. ­These correspond to the eighth responsory in the Feast of All Saints and with the painting accompanying Scivias III.xiii. Both of Hildegard’s

254 Chapter 8

chants meld understanding of virginity and consecrated w ­ omen with veneration of the Virgin Mary, describing her in terms of a new dawn. In the antiphon, they are the beautiful ­faces “building” in the dawn, an allusion to the singing of Lauds in the monastic office, which takes place at dawn. Hildegard wrote an exquisite set of antiphons for Lauds of Marian feasts, a group of lyr­ics that also underscores the theme of the day’s new beginning, the newness of the fresh and redeemed creation ­after the time of judgment, and the role of consecrated w ­ omen in their acts of praise at filling the golden number.54 The last of the set is the responsory for virgins, “O nobilissima uiriditas,” a chant in which Hildegard quoted extensively in the ­music from the Marian antiphon “Aue regina celorum”; she alludes to this parent chant in the text of her responsory as well.55 The responsory is set in transposed mode 6, with a final and emphasis on C, and is bound musically, textually, and dramatically to Victory’s speech in the Ordo virtutum, this sung at the moment when Satan is tied down and defeated. Directly relevant ­here too are the ways in which Hildegard joined this text to impor­tant themes found within the Scivias set as a w ­ hole. The flowering branch h ­ ere has its roots in the Sun, radiating light and “blushing like the dawn, burning like a flame of the sun.” Like Hildegard in the act of creation as shown in her portrait, virginity itself is warmed by Christ so it can blaze with its own light. In this deft lyric, Hildegard remade the plant of Jesse, drawing the dawn of the new age referenced in the painting for Scivias III.xiii, burning “in a sphere no earthly eminence attains.” As reflected in the text, Hildegard joined her statement about virginity and its shimmering importance with the Virgin Mary, symbolized too by the dawn, and the remaking of the cosmos that took place through the Incarnation: Most noble greenness that is rooted in the Sun you shine in bright serenity in a wheel that no earthly eminence can grasp: You are surrounded in the embraces of holy ministries. You blush like the dawn and burn like the flame of the Sun.56 Hildegard’s compositions praising virginity and the Virgin Mary are given a foundation in this final Scivias chant and its related ­music in the Ordo virtutum. She wrote other chants in transposed mode 6, with finals on C for the Virgin Mary, creating a



Endings and Time Beyond Time 255

complex of material interrelated both textually and through musical resonance.57 The antiphon “Hodie aperuit” belongs to this group and is the chant we selected for our digital model of the cosmos, at the burst of Incarnational light that also releases the virtues as transforming ideas.58 The musical setting, with its carefully developed phrases, parses the meaning of the text by putting vari­ous phrases in pairs, a technique typical of Hildegard’s use of form (Example 8.10). This also allows her to both expand and contract musical material to underscore par­tic­u­lar words. The setting of the word “aperuit,” for example, is a contraction of the musical line for the word “hodie.” Th ­ ere are three phases that are based on what I have called “2” material, and the first two (2 and 2′) are very close to each other. Through their repeated material, Hildegard emphasizes the portal closed by the snake, a door that has several meanings: the closed womb of the Virgin, the gate of Eden guarded by angels and prohibited to the fallen race of humankind, and the eastern portal of the t­ emple sanctuary (see Ezek. 44:2–3). The musical material labeled “3” is dif­fer­ent enough from “2” to be distinguished, and it seems that a form of “3” w ­ ill repeat for the next line, but then the musical structure is broken by the setting of the phrase “in aurora flos,” the glistening flower of Christ, the one who opens all the allegorical doors. The way Hildegard set this phrase, using the higher range, provides a strong underscoring of its importance in the poem as a ­whole, making a sonic flower bloom at the top of the Jesse tree, enacted in song and in the play. The word “flos” is one that Hildegard would have known from the familiar early eleventh-­century responsory featured in the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, the “Stirps Jesse,” the very fountain from which understandings of the Jesse tree flowed in the Latin West:59 “R. The shoot of Jesse produced a rod, and the rod a flower; and now over the flower rests a nurturing spirit. V. The shoot is the virgin genetrix of God, and the flower is her son” (R. Stirps Yesse uirgam produxit uirgaque florem et super hunc florum requiescit spiritus almus [Can 007709]; V. Virga dei genetrix uirgo est flos filius eius [Can 007709a]).60 ­After this “appearance” of the flower (flos) in “Hodie aperuit,” “2” material returns, but now transformed, as is the portal that was previously shut. Hildegard’s way of composing is always closely tied to her poetry and the words and phrases she emphasized through her musical settings drive theological meanings: ­ oday a closed portal T Opens to us That the serpent strangled in a ­woman, But now the bloom from the Virgin Mary Shines clearly in the dawn.

Ex. 8.10. “Hodie aperuit.” D, fol. 154v. The differentia for this antiphon is supplied in the margin of D, and the pitches are not precisely heightened. I have followed the edition of Corrigan h ­ ere in expanding them to fit the mode of the chant, which is a transposition of tritus, from F to C. See Corrigan, “Nunc aperuit nobis,” Symphonia, pp. 28–29. i



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The musical phrases, parsing the Latin text, are as follows: Hodie 1 aperuit 1′ nobis clausa 2 porta quod serpens 2′ in muliere suffocauit c unde lucet in aurora flos Opening from 3, but breaks with 4 “in aurora flos” de Virgine Maria.61 2″

Conclusion: Praise and the Cosmos The final Scivias lyric in praise of virginity draws the reader of the treatise to the closing gesture of the last vision: it is a final triumphant song proclaimed by the saints, a­ fter the earthly songs are over, the lamenting play has made its final moan, and the universe itself has been transformed, its very ele­ments reordered. In the serene glowing of the eternal final dawn of the new creation, Hildegard turned to one of her most cited role models, the psalmist David, the king of the sung liturgy. The final biblical text paraphrased at length in Scivias is the psalm set of Lauds, Psalms 148–50, in which all creation—­from rocks to trees to beasts to angels to ­people—­join in a dawn song of praise, for t­ hese texts w ­ ere always sung at Lauds in the Latin liturgy. Hildegard explicated them as she proclaimed them, asking for all to join in, speaking in the Voice of the Living Light: “Therefore, let every­one who understands God by faith faithfully offer Him tireless praises, and with joyful devotion sing to Him without ceasing. As my servant David, filled with the spirit of lofty profundity, exhorts on my behalf saying, ‘Praise him with the sound of trumpets . . . ​, ­etc.’ ” 62 The psalms as Hildegard explained them reference all the categories of saints she reviewed in the painting, in the lyr­ics, and in her many allusions to the Feast of All Saints in Scivias III.xiii.16. E ­ very group is pre­sent in this long passage, praising in the words of t­ hese final psalm texts. For the final command is to the community to praise, with reference to a new creation in the context of the first creation and to the seer who has done the writing and the praising, a new Eve, the frail earthly reflection, a ­daughter of Mary: “Praise, therefore, praise God, ye blessed hearts, for the miracles God has wrought in the frail earthly reflection of the beauty of the Most High; as He Himself foreshadowed when he first made ­Woman from the rib of the man he had created.” 63

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The importance of praise in the working of the cosmos and its spinning ­toward the end of time is summed up in one of Hildegard’s lyr­ics that survives without its ­music, “O Fili dilectissimi.” In this unusual poem, the Virgin herself speaks of the mystical creation of Christ within her womb “by the might of the circling wheel of the holy Godhead” (see also Chapter 4).64 The Christ within is compared to a mystical m ­ usic that uses all the tones, and so, in a way, recalls the song that Adam could hear before he fell into sin, described in Chapter 3: O beloved Son, Whom I bore in my womb By the might of the circling wheel Of the holy Godhead, Who created me And arranged all my limbs, And laid in my womb All manner of m ­ usic In all the flowers of the tones: Now a ­great flock of virgins Follows me and you, O sweetest Son. Deign by your help to save them.65 This symphony of sound that was laid in the virginal womb was also described in Scivias III.viii.13: “Therefore, O virginity, which by the ardent enkindling produced the greatest fruit, which shone in the star of the sea and fights the savage darts of the Devil and despises all shameful filth, rejoice in celestial harmony and hope for the com­pany of angels. How? The Holy Spirit makes ­music in the tabernacle of virginity.” In the sequence for St. Rupert, “O Ierusalem,” “the symphonies of the spirit” ring in this virginal saint’s soul, too; this is one of the ways Hildegard used the poem to relate the w ­ omen’s patron saint Rupert to the Virgin Mary.66 In “O Fili” Christ is the ­music made of “all the flowers of the tones,” the ­music made in the tabernacle of pure but ­human flesh at the moment of Incarnation. The sounds of the many tones are, in an allegorical sense, Christ himself, a Christ that can be taken on by the members of his body through their own voices of praise. When ­humans sing with the flowers of the tones, they have Christ within; they are incarnating through praise. The melismas described above and found in the Scivias chants have all the tones, expressed in the range of a mighty mystical monochord.



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They are representative of an “urmusic,” the paradise of praise that is sung by unfallen spirits and ­will be sung one day by all the saints. ­These melismas, wide-­ ranging and combining scales from many tonal areas, symbolize the m ­ usic that was known by Adam, the mystic, in the Garden before his Fall: “Now, Adam, before his treachery, used to know angelic song and e­ very kind of m ­ usic, and he used to have a voice sounding like a monochord sounds. But in his treachery, from the cunning of the serpent, a certain wind of his [of the serpent] twisted him in the marrow and the thigh, and this [wind] is indeed now in ­every man. And from that wind, man’s spleen has grown fat, and foolish joy and laughter and even jeers are shaken out of man.” 67 In a letter written in 1176, Guibert of Gembloux, Hildegard’s last secretary, described the ways in which Hildegard received ­music as part of her visions and what this meant for her subsequent compositional work: “Moreover, returning to ordinary life from the melody of that internal concert, she frequently takes delight in causing ­those sweet modes which she learns and remembers in that spiritual harmony to reverberate with the sound of voices, and, remembering God, making a festive day from what she remembers of that spiritual ­music, and often, delighted to find t­ hose same melodies in their resounding to be more pleasing than ­t hose of common h ­ uman effort, makes words for them for the praise of God and in honor of the saints, to be sung publicly in church.” 68 ­There are several t­hings that can be inferred from this provocative description. Hildegard heard m ­ usic in her visions: they w ­ ere concerned not only with sight and spoken commentaries but also with melodies.69 Just as she was able to remember what she saw and was told in the visions, she was also able to remember the m ­ usic she heard within them. Afterward, then, the m ­ usic from the visions was put to use, and what was originally wordless in the visions was given text. Guibert found her m ­ usic “far more pleasing than ordinary h ­ uman m ­ usic.” Th ­ ese words relate as well to that sense expressed by Odo of Soissons, writing to Hildegard in 1148–49, that Hildegard was ­doing something new in her compositions.70 The ­music Hildegard received and wrote texts for was then used as the basis for new compositions designed by her “to be sung publicly in church.” It was, then, the m ­ usic she heard that was to become the God-­given voice of the Living Light. The texts ­were cut into it by Hildegard and so explained the meanings of the divine sound, but made for h ­ umans to render back in praise. The words are the humanity of the savior; the notes of all the tones are his eternal nature, and a praising singer partakes of both in a kind of sonic communion. This description of the relationship between the notes and the words reveals much about all of Hildegard’s work as a theologian, as a designer of art, as a dramatist,

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and as a composer of liturgical m ­ usic. The materials she received came from the Living Light, with a directness that was rare and pos­si­ble only for a person with her grace-­fi lled insights. But then, as is the case with all ­great prophets, the gift became her burden. It was her work to shape the visions into a theological treatise, to design the art that would express the thought, to write the poems and the play for the ­music received from God so that all could use them as vehicles of cosmos-­transforming praise. It was a large-­scale undertaking, and most importantly, her efforts ­were offered as a gift to the community it was also Hildegard’s responsibility to lead. If the requisite praise could be inspired through her works in their hearts, she would be the leader they needed; pledges taken on the Feast of All Saints could become real­ity. If the works in all their many aspects could be preserved and given to ­others, more too could be sustained and nurtured. And when the cosmos came to its inevitable close, this community would be a part of the final joy of eternal praise, for they might know the ways. Scivias.

APPENDIX 1

Locations of Paintings, Flourished Initials, Headings, and Quire Signatures in Wiesbaden 1

Book/Vision

Heading

Painting/s

Flourished initial

Quire sig.

I. Preface I.i I.ii I.iii I.iv I.v I.vi II.i II.ii II.iii II.iv II.v

1r 2r 3v–4r 13v 21v–22r 34v–35r 37v 41r–­v 46v 50r–­v 59v–60r 64v–65r–­v

1r 2r 4r 14r 22r/24v/25r 35r 38r 41v 47r 51r 60r 66r

1r 2v 4v 14v 22v 35v 38v 42r 47v 51v 60v 66v

1/8v

2/16v 3/24v 4/32v 5/40v 6/48v 7/56v no sig.

A heading for the ­table of contents of II/5 is at the bottom of fol. 64v. This is repeated at the head of fol. 65r by Scribe 3, who then copies the headings on fols. 65r and 65v. I believe this is an added page of some sort. Following the count of the fasciles and their pages, signatures would be expected on 64v and then, if this ­were the case, on 72v.

II.vi This fascile has 10 folios

84r–86r

86r and 86v

86r

II.vii III.1 III.2

115r–­v 122r–­v 130r–­v

115v and 116r 122v and 123r 130v

116r 123r

9/73v 10/81v 11/91v 12/99v 13/107v 14/115v 15/123v 16/124v

262

Appendix 1

(continued) Book/Vision

Heading

Painting/s

Flourished initial

Quire sig.

Pages are out of order ­here. Notes in a modern cursive hand explain this, but it is difficult to surmise when it happened. In E the proper order of pages has been restored. III.3 III.4 III.5 III.6

138v 145r–146v 152r–153r 160v–161v

138v and 139r 145v and 146r 153r 161v

139r 146r 153v 162r

III.7 III.8

172r 177v–178r

172r 178r

172v 178v

III.9

191v

192r

192v

17/139v No sig. 19/155v 21/171v 22/179v 23/187v 24/195v

Texts on fols. 191r–192v break from Scribe 2 and are copied by Scribe 3. The text blocks do not fit within the customary rulings h ­ ere e­ ither. III.10 III.11 III.12

202v–203r 213v–214r 224v–225r

III.13

228v–229r

203v 214v 225r and 225v 229r

203v 215r 225v

25/203v no sig. no sig.

229v

no sig.

APPENDIX 2

Scribes Responsible for Texts and Headings in MS W, Wiesbaden 1, Illuminated Scivias, from Black-­and-­White Photos

Scribe 1 is not found elsewhere on the Rupertsberg. Scribe 2 is Hand A in ­Table 2.2. Scribe 3 is Scribe D in T ­ able 2.2. Scribe 4 requires study, but is a Rupertsberg hand.

Fascicles

Pages

Scribes in texts

Contents

Headings (majority)

I–­III

1–24 II–­III Scribe 2 25–32 33–40 41–56 57–64 Contents II.iv 65–73 Contents II.v 74–187 Scribe 2, contents 188–95 196–235

1

Pref./I.i–iv

Scribe 1

1/3 3/1 1 1/2

I.iv I.iv–vi I.vi–­II.iii II.iii–iv

Scribe 2 Scribe 2 Scribe 4 Scribe 4/Scribe 2

3/2

II.v

Scribe 4/ Scribe 3

2

II.v–­III.viii

Scribe 4/Scribe 3

2/3/2 2

III.viii–ix III.ix–­x iii

Scribe 3 Scribes 2, 3, 4

IV V VI–­V II VIII IX* X–­X XXIII (XI*) XXIV XXV–­X XIX

APPENDIX 3

Texts for the Office of All Saints, with Commentary

This summary of major texts and themes for the Feast of All Saints in Hildegard’s region and lifetime is based on Engelberg 103, fols. 67r–­v and 149v–150v (for the responsories, see further discussion in Chapter 8), with commentary relating the chant texts to themes found in Scivias. The identification numbers for the chants and the chant texts are supplied from CANTUS (http://­cantus​.­uwaterloo​.­ca​ /­). A chant labeled ** indicates that only the incipit is provided in Engelberg 103, rather than the entire chant. This is b ­ ecause the chant occurs elsewhere in the manuscript, and indeed, the Feast of All Saints is largely comprised of borrowed materials from other festive occasions, so it provides a kind of magnificent summary of themes and ideas from throughout the entire church year.

I. First Vespers, the Eve­ning Before the Day of the Feast Antiphons and the psalms they accompany advance the theme of blessedness for t­ hose who fear the Lord, and for the Just. The first antiphon text is “­Great are the works of the Lord in the councils and the congregation of the just” (Can003214, In consilio justorum et congregatione magna opera domini). The last psalm antiphon text reads: “The just ­w ill confess your name and the righ­teous w ­ ill dwell with your face” (Can003535, Justi confitebuntur nomini tuo et habitabunt recti cum vultu tuo). The hymn “Christe Redemptor” (Can008276) addresses the ranks of the saints, one by one: the Virgin Mary, the angels, the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, and the sacred virgins and monks (strophe 5, for example: “Choirs of all holy virgins and monks, at once with all other saints, make us friends of Christ”; Chori sanctarum virginum monachorumque omnium, simul cum sanctis omnibus consortes Christi facite). This ninth-­century hymn was widespread, as a check in the CANTUS database reveals. The antiphon for the Magnificat of First Vespers joins the saints together with Mary’s hymn of praise from Luke and the feast of the Lamb from Revelation: “O how glorious is that kingdom in which all the saints rejoice with Christ; clothed in white robes they follow the lamb wherever it goes” (Can004063, O quam gloriosum est regnum in quo cum Christo gaudent omnes sancti amicti stolis albis sequuntur agnum quocumque ierit). The theme of the lamb’s high feast is prominent in Scivias, as ­w ill be seen in the discussion to follow. The pro­cessional antiphon, also addressing the Virgin Mary, the apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, and the virgins, is “Savior of the world, save us all; holy m ­ other of God, Mary ever virgin, pray for us, and with the prayers of the holy apostles, the martyrs, the confessors, and the holy virgins, we seek supplicantly that we may be snatched from all evils and deserve now and always to enjoy all good ­t hings” (Can004689, Salvator mundi salva nos omnes sancta dei genetrix virgo semper Maria ora pro nobis precibus quoque sanctorum apostolorum martyrum et confessorum atque sanctarum

266

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virginum suppliciter petimus ut a malis omnibus eruamur bonisque omnibus nunc et semper perfrui mereamur).

II. Matins: Sung Prayer in the M ­ iddle of the Night (Around Two Hours) Hymn: “Iesu salvator”: strophe by strophe, the ranks of the saints praise Christ: Mary, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and monks. This Carolingian hymn is often attributed to Rabanus Maurus. First Nocturn of Matins The antiphons praise saintly attributes, emphasizing the just, with verses selected in each case from the psalms they accompany, chosen to be proper to the feast: Psalm 1, sung with antiphon 1.1: “The Lord knows the way of the just ones who meditate on his law day and night” (Can 003965, Novit dominus viam justorum qui in lege ejus meditantur die ac nocte); Psalm 4, sung with a paraphrase of verse 4: Ant. 1.2: “The Lord has made his saints wonderful and has heard them crying unto him” (Can 003766, Mirificavit dominus sanctos suos et exaudivit eos clamantes ad se); Psalm 8 with a paraphrase of several verses: Ant. 1.3: “How wonderful is your name, Lord, for you have crowned your saints with glory and honor and established them above the works of your hands” (Can 001283, Admirabile est nomen tuum domine quia gloria et honore coronasti sanctos tuos et constituisti eos super opera manuum tuarum); Psalm 14, sung with Ant. 1.4: “Lord, they who work justice ­w ill dwell in your tabernacle and w ­ ill rest in your holy mountain” (Can 002369, Domine qui operati sunt justitiam habitabunt in tabernaculo tuo et requiescent in monte sancto tuo); Psalm 23, with verse: Ant. 1.5: “This is the generation of them that seek him, of them that seek the face of the God of Jacob” (Can 002999, Haec est generatio quaerentium dominum quaerentium faciem dei Jacob); Psalm 32, sung with Ant. 1.6: “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice O just ones, and shout for joy all you righ­teous” (Can 003564, Laetamini in domino et exsultate justi et gloriamini omnes recti corde). The readings for this nocturn and the next w ­ ere adapted from a Carolingian sermon describing the Feast of All Saints in Rome by Pope Boniface in the early seventh c­ entury for the establishment of a new church dedicated to Mary and the saints on the ruins of the Pantheon (incipit: “Legimus in ecclesiasticis historiis”).1 In the first nocturn the readings are punctuated by four responsories (with their verses). Although incipits only are provided in Engelberg 103, I have reconstructed the texts by consulting other feasts. Numbering is by nocturns as in CANTUS. 1. No. 1.1. “Let us bless the ­Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit; let us praise and exalt him above all forever. Verse: Blessed are you Lord in the firmament of heaven, glorious and worthy of praise” (Benedicamus patrem,** sung also on the Feast of Holy Trinity, Engelburg 103, 135r. Can 006239 and Can006239a. R. Benedicamus patrem et filium cum sancto spiritu laudemus et superexaltemus eum in saecula V. Benedictus es domine in firmamento caeli et laudabilis et gloriosus [Mode 8]). 2. No. 1.2.. “You are, indeed, happy, holy Virgin Mary, and most worthy of all praise, for from you is risen the sun of justice, Christ, of God. Verse: Pray for the ­people, plead for the clergy, intercede for the consecrated ­women, let all who celebrate your feast experience your assistance” (Can 006725 and Can006725a, sung also on the feast of the Nativity of the BVM, in Eng. 103, fol. 145v. Felix namque es, sancta Virgo Maria, et omni laude dignissima; qua es te ortus est sol iusticie, Christus Deus noster. V. Ora pro populo, interueni pro clero, intercede pro deuoto femineo sexu, sentiant omnes tuum leuamen quicumque celebrant tuam festivitatem [Mode 1]). 3. No. 1.3. “All the angels praise you, Holy Lord on high, saying ‘To you are due praise and honor, Lord’; The cherubim and seraphim and all the heavenly ranks proclaim you saying” (Can 007757 and Can007757a, sung also on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel. Te sanctum dominum in excelsis



Texts for the Office of All Saints, with Commentary 267

laudant omnes angeli dicentes te decet laus et honor domine. V. Cherubim quoque et seraphim sanctus proclamant et omnis caelicus ordo dicens [Mode 1]). 4. No. 1.4. “Among the sons of w ­ omen none r­ ose up who was greater than John the Baptist, who prepared the way of the Lord in the desert. Th ­ ere was man sent by God whose name was John” (Can 006979 and Can 006979a, also sung on feasts of John the Baptist. R. Inter natos mulierum non surrexit major Joanne Baptista qui viam domino praeparavit in eremo.V. Fuit homo missus a deo cui nomen Joannes erat [Mode 1, sometimes Mode 1 transposed]). Second Nocturn of Matins The antiphons of the first nocturn emphasize the just and justice among other saintly qualities. ­Those of the second concentrate on t­ hose who fear the Lord, as key verses chosen for the chants from the Psalms demonstrate, along with several references to the virtues, drawing them into the themes of the feast. Antiphon 2.1: “Fear the Lord, all his saints, for nothing is lacking to t­ hose who fear him; behold the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and his ears on their prayers” (Can 005151, with Psalm 33: Timete dominum omnes sancti ejus quoniam nihil deest timentibus eum ecce oculi domini super justos et aures ejus in preces eorum). Antiphon 2.2: “Lord, hope of the saints and tower of their strength, you give inheritance to ­those fearing your name and they ­will dwell in your tabernacle forever” (Can 002390, with Psalm 60: Domine spes sanctorum et turris fortitudinis eorum dedisti hereditatem timentibus nomen tuum et inhabitabunt in tabernaculo tuo in saecula). Antiphon 2.3: “Blessed are the saints whom you elected, Lord: indeed, they w ­ ill dwell in your courts and cry out and sing a hymn” (Can 001594, with Psalm 64: Beati quos elegisti domine habitabunt in atriis tuis etenim clamabunt et hymnum dicent). Antiphon 2.4: “Lord, God of heavenly hosts, all the blessed ones who hope in you, you who ­will not keep them from good ­things who walk in justice and ­will praise you forever” (Can 2340, with Psalm 84: Domine deus virtutum beati omnes qui sperant in te non privabis bonis eos qui ambulant in aequitate in saecula saeculorum laudabunt te). Antiphon 2.5: “You who love the Lord rejoice in the Lord and tell the remembrances of his holiness” (Can 004466, with Psalm 96: Qui diligitis dominum laetamini in domino et confitemini memoriae sanctitatis ejus; a composite text made of verses 10 and 12 of Psalm 96). Antiphon 2.6: “Bless the lord all his heavenly hosts (virtutes); you his ministers who do his ­will; bless the Lord” (Can 001699, with Psalm 102; the antiphon is from verse 21 of this psalm: Benedicite domino, omnes virtutes ejus, benedicite ministri ejus, qui facitis voluntatem ejus). Responsories of the second nocturn. Responsories are borrowed from appropriate categories of saints as the progression through a hagiographical hierarchy continues. Th ­ ese responsories have been reconstructed from consultation with the feasts where they are provided in full in Engelberg 103. 5. No. 2.1. Qui sunt isti** (borrowed from the Common for Apostles); “Who are ­t hese who fly like clouds and like doves to their win­dows: Their wings are full of eyes and sparks and lights moving ­here and t­ here in their midst” (Can 007484 and Can007484za, Qui sunt isti qui ut nubes volant et quasi columbae ad fenestras suas); verse in Eng. 103: “Dorsa eorum plena sunt oculis et scintille ac lampades in medio discurrentes” (see Wisdom 3:7) [Mode 1]). 6. No. 2.2. Isti sunt** (borrowed from the Common for Martyrs, and so not given h ­ ere in full); “­These are the holy men whom the Lord chose in true love, and gave to them eternal glory whose teaching shines forth with the church like the sun and the moon; the saints devoted to justice through faith subdued kingdoms” (Can 007026, Isti sunt viri sancti quos elegit dominus in caritate non ficta et dedit illis gloriam sempiternam quorum doctrina fulget ecclesia ut sol et luna. Probable verse: Sancti per fidem vicerunt regna operati sunt justitiam [Mode 8]). 7. No. 2.3. Sint lumbi** (borrowed from the Common of Confessors and so not given in full at this place in the manuscript); “May their loins be girded and your lamps burning in your hands, and you be like ­until the p ­ eople awaiting their lord when he returns from wedding feast; be vigilant

268

Appendix 3

therefore since you do not know in what hour your lord ­w ill come” (Can 007675 and Can007675a, Sint lumbi vestri praecincti et lucernae ardentes in manibus vestris et vos similes hominibus exspectantibus dominum suum quando revertatur a nuptiis. Probable verse: Vigilate ergo quia nescitis qua hora dominus vester venturus sit). 8. No. 2.4. “The kingdom of heaven is like ten virgins who taking up their lamps go out to meet the bridegroom and bride” (completely written out, although also sung at Common of Virgins in many places, but not in Eng. 103) (Can 007667); usually Mode 7 or Mode 4. Verse: “And in the m ­ iddle of the night a g­ reat clamor rises up: keep vigilant, virgins, for the bridegroom comes” (Matt. 25:1 and 6: Simile est regnum caelorum decem virginibus quae accipientes lampades suas exierunt obviam sponso et sponsae; verse: Can 006151zc, Media autem nocte factus est clamor vigilate virgines et de sponsus advenit). Third Nocturn of Matins Antiphon for the canticle: “Rejoice in heaven souls of the saints who followed the footsteps of Christ and ­because they shed blood for his love; they ­w ill reign with Christ in eternity” (Can 00 2927, Gaudent in caelis animae sanctorum qui Christi vestigia sunt secuti et quia pro ejus amore sanguinem suum fuderunt ideo cum Christo regnabunt in aeternum). Intoned Canticle: from 1 Esdras 8: “You are the holy ones of the Lord, and the vessels are holy, and the silver and gold, that is freely offered to the Lord the God of our ­fathers. (29) Watch ye and keep them, till you deliver them by weight before the chief of the priests, and of the Levites, and the heads of the families of Israel in Jerusalem, into the trea­sure of the h ­ ouse of the Lord. (30) And the priests and the Levites received the weight of the silver and gold, and the vessels, to carry them to Jerusalem to the ­house of our God” (Vos sancti Domini, et vasa sancta, et argentum et aurum, quod sponte oblatum est Domino Deo patrum nostrorum. [29] vigilate et custodite, donec appendatis coram principibus sacerdotum, et Levitarum, et ducibus familiarum Israel in Jerusalem, in thesaurum domus Domini. [30] Susceperunt autem sacerdotes et Levitae pondus argenti, et auri, et vasorum, ut deferrent Jerusalem in domum Dei nostri). The first reading is the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5, and the rest of the readings are one brief excerpt from Augustine’s treatise on the Sermon on the Mount, Book 1, chapter 1, divided into three parts (from Si quaeritur . . . ​to celum et terram). Responsories of the third nocturn 9. No. 3.1. “Sing praise to our God all his saints, and you small and ­great who fear God; since the Lord our God all power­f ul ­w ill reign, let us rejoice and exalt and give him glory; Elected offspring, holy tribe, purchased ­people, be mindful of God and praise him” (Can 007079, Laudem dicite deo nostro omnes sancti ejus et qui timetis deum pusilli et magni quoniam regnabit dominus deus noster omnipotens gaudeamus et exsultemus et demus gloriam ei; Verse: Can 007079a, Genus electum gens sancta populus acquisitionis memores memorum laudate deum [Mode 8]). Proper to the Feast of All Saints. 10. No. 3.2. “You are blessed, all saints of God who deserve to be made consorts of the heavenly hosts (virtues) and to enjoy the glory of eternal light so that mindful of us you may deign to intercede for us to our Lord God Jesus Christ; Rejoice and exalt all saints for your names are written in heaven” (Can 006175, Beati estis sancti dei omnes qui meruistis consortes fieri celestium virtutum et perfrui aeternae claritatis gloria ideoque precamur ut memores nostri intercedere dignemini pro nobis ad dominum deum nostrum Iesum Christum; Verse: Can 006175a, Gaudete et exsultate omnes sancti quoniam nomina vestra scripta sunt in celis [Mode 7]). Proper to the Feast of All Saints. 11. No. 3.3 (also found for the Common of Martyrs). “Blessed are t­ hose who suffer persecution for the sake of justice since theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are the peacemakers since they ­w ill be called sons of God; Blessed are the pure in heart since they ­w ill see God” (Can 006183, Beati



Texts for the Office of All Saints, with Commentary 269

qui persecutionem patiuntur propter justitiam quoniam ipsorum est regnum celorum beati pacifici quoniam filii dei vocabuntur; Verse: Can 006183a, Beati mundo corde quoniam ipsi deum videbunt [Mode 7]). Can be sung also for feasts of Martyrs. 12. No. 3.4. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are the meek for they ­w ill inherit the earth; blessed are they who mourn for they w ­ ill be comforted; blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice for they w ­ ill be filled; Blessed are the merciful for they w ­ ill obtain mercy” (Can 006181, Beati pauperes spiritu quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum beati mites quoniam ipsi possidebunt terram beati qui lugent quoniam ipsi consolabuntur beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam quoniam ipsi saturabuntur; Verse: Can 006181a, Beati misericordes quoniam ipsi misericordiam consequentur [mode 7]). Proper for the Feast of All Saints but found in relatively few manuscripts.

III. Lauds for All Saints’ Day Antiphons for the Psalms 1. “And we know that to them that love God, all ­t hings work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints” (Can 004830, Scimus quoniam diligentibus deum omnia cooperantur in bonum his qui secundum propositum vocati sunt sancti, Rom. 8:28). 2. “Let the p ­ eople recount the wisdom of the saints and the entire church declare their praise” (Can 004815, Sapientiam sanctorum narrant populi et laudem eorum pronuntiat omnis ecclesia, Eccl. 44:15). 3. “And the Lord rendered the wages of the ­labors of his saints and led them in a wonderful way” (Can 004583, Reddet deus mercedem laborum sanctorum suorum et deducet illis in via mirabili, Sap. 10:17). 4. “You spirits and souls of the just, sing a hymn to our God, alleluia, alleluia” (Can 005000, Spiritus et animae justorum hymnum dicite deo nostro alleluia alleluia; see Dan. 3:86). 5. “This glory is to all his saints” (Can 002945, Gloria hec est omnibus sanctis ejus, Ps. 149:9); sung with Psalms 148–50. Antiphon for the Benedictus “In the city of the Lord, ­t here the organ of the saints sounds ceaselessly; ­t here the sweetest odor of cinnamon and of balsam; ­t here the angels sing their songs and the archangels their hymn to God before the throne of God, alleluia” (Can 003210, In civitate domini ibi sonant jugiter organa sanctorum ibi cinnamomum et balsamum odor suavissimus carmina eorum ibi angeli et archangeli hymnum deo decantant ante thronum dei alleluia).

IV. Second Vespers for All Saints’ Day Antiphons are taken from the Common of Several Martyrs. Antiphon for the Magnificat “Give praise to our God, all you saints and you that fear him, l­ittle and g­ reat; for the Lord our God the almighty ­w ill reign; let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him” (Can 003950, Laudem dicite deo nostro omnes sancti ejus et qui timetis deum pusilli et magni quoniam regnabit dominus deus noster omnipotens gaudeamus et exsultemus et demus gloriam ei [Apoc. 19, conflated and edited version of verses 5 and 7]).

APPENDIX 4

Smaller Dramatic/Musical Units as Found in the Ordo virtutum

Section I. Within the Edifice of Salvation: The Pillar of the Word of God (Scivias III.iv) Introduction (1–22). Patriarchs and prophets (D and then E) ask the virtues (D) to explain who they are, as trapped souls sing of their miseries and plead for help (E). The Fall (23–66). The overly triumphant happy Soul (whom Knowledge of God tries to help) crashes and burns (moves from D to E).

Interlude (67–84). Dialogue with the Devil Diabolus (speech 1); virtues’ musical response: “O Plangens Vox” (E); Diabolus (speech 2).

Section II. Within the Edifice of Salvation: The Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior (Scivias III.viii) The Call to Action (85–142). The first group of virtues, taken from Scivias III.viii. Humility calls the virtues to her, beginning with the first group (from Scivias III.viii), each of whom has a speech; Diabolus (speech 3) challenges them in the midst, taunting Fear of the Lord (alternation of D and E).

Interlude. Steps to the Son of Man Musical Interlude (143–66). In praise of Virginity; Chastity does not say “Ego . . .” to define herself but rather sings to Virginity. This is followed by the virtues’ response: “Flos campi cadit,” a piece in A, with a phrase in C on the word “virginitas.” This chant is followed by Innocence’s cry to flee (E). The interlude is rounded off by Contempt of the World, who sets up the next grouping (from Scivias III.x) (E), which w ­ ill begin with Celestial Love, and drawing the virtues to the Fountain of Life.

Section III. The Tower of the Anticipation of God’s ­Will (with reference to the Wall of the Old Law, Scivias III.iii) Second major group of virtues (167–214) assembling for the b ­ attle. Th ­ ese virtues, taken from Scivias III.iii, but adding Discretion (from Scivias III.vi), are also introduced one by one (alternation of D and E, but the pattern is broken more dramatically h ­ ere, with introduction of a major area in C; several sing in C, including Victory; Patience is moved to last, and hovers on B).

Interlude. Call to Victory Musical interlude: Lines 215–19, in D. [Humility] calls the virtues.

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Section IV. The Soul Becomes Penitent (220–71) The collected assembly of virtues is addressed [by Humility?] preparing them for b ­ attle with the Dev­i l: “O filie Israel” (D). The collected virtues, led by Humility, receive the penitent Soul, who has feared they would not care for it; encouraged by the virtues, the Soul moves from E to D, and fi­nally sings the familiar virtues’ D musical material.

Interlude. The Living Fountain O uivens fons (272–84). The virtues sing the musical interlude, praising the penitent Soul to God: “O uiuens fons” (E, but with most of the chant actually in D), one of the most impor­tant moments in the play musically.

Section V. Referencing the Tower of the Anticipation of God’s ­Will, and near the Gap in the Wall, Scivias III.iii and Scivias III.viii (285–313). The B ­ attle and Victory Diabolus (speech 4) addresses the Soul, who responds to him now in D, and calls upon Humility and the other virtues to aid her in the b ­ attle (mostly in D); Humility calls on Victory to lead the charge.

Interlude Victory responds and completes the work of defeat, with a cry of triumph that has been foreshadowed musically (in C), a passage that may reference the Marian antiphon “Aue regina celorum”; the virtues respond briefly in E with “Laus tibi Christi.”

Section VI. Chastity and the Finale Chastity has the last word (314–40). Chastity returns with a long solo (D), replied to by the Diabolus (speech 5); Chastity answers (D). The virtues sing a song of praise to God: “O Deus” (D).

Postlude. (The Son of Man, Scivias III.x) The strug­g le goes on (341–60), and the virtues sing a description of the work that remains (E), while Christ pleads for joining him in “In principio.” “In principio,” discussed in Chapter 8, is concerned with the end of time.

NOTES

Introduction 1. Barbara Obrist says: “The history of the assimilation of newly translated cosmological writings during the twelfth ­century is yet to be written, just as the ongoing transmission of Latin cosmology remains to be acknowledged and investigated. More specifically, any attempt at tracing the history of twelfth-­century cosmology needs to envision the entirety, and not merely chosen aspects of then prevailing ideas about the structure and the functioning of the universe.” Barbara Obrist, “William of Conches, Māshā’Allāh, and Twelfth-­Century Cosmology,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 76/1 (2009): 29–87, at 29. 2. Other works that study Hildegard from interdisciplinary modes of study are Anne King-­ Lenzmeier, Hildegard of Bingen: An Integrated Vision (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001) and Barbara Stühlmeyer, Die Gesänge der Hildegard von Bingen: Eine musikologische, theologische und kulturhistorische Untersuchung (Hildesheim: Olms, 2003). Both overviews have much to recommend them; my own work has gone in a dif­fer­ent direction through its emphasis on creation and cosmos in one par­t ic­u ­lar manuscript, Hildegard’s illuminated Scivias. Matthew Fox’s discussion of the paintings situates them in theological study: Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen (Santa Fe, NM: Beat, 1985) and demonstrates long thinking about the meanings of the artworks. Barbara Newman, in her ­Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), provides theological contexts for many of the paintings in Wiesbaden 1, and her remarks have been exceedingly useful for the pre­sent study. Adelgundis Führkötter, Kosmos und Mensch aus der Sicht Hildegards von Bingen (Mainz: Verlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1987) also recognizes the centrality of cosmology to Hildegard’s theology, but without my emphasis on the liturgy and Hildegard’s musical hermeneutics. 3. The critical edition of Scivias, by Adelgundis Führkötter, with Angela Carlevaris, is in CCCM 43 and 43A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). The other two major treatises constituting her trilogy are her Liber vite meritorum (Book of Life’s Merits), ed. Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 90 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), composed around 1158–63, and Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works), ed. Albert Derolez and Peter Dronke, CCCM 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), composed around 1163–74. All references are to t­ hese editions and to the En­g lish translation of Scivias (sometimes with modifications) as prepared by M ­ other Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990). Liber divinorum operum has been translated into En­g lish as Book of Divine Works by Nathaniel M. Campbell (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 2018), and I have referenced his work in the notes as ­t here are many parallels between Hildegard’s Scivias and its cosmological understanding and the cosmology of the LDO. In many ways, indeed, the LDO is a commentary on Scivias.  My practice is to provide Latin in the notes for many of the En­g lish translations from Scivias itself; other than that, I tend to include only reputable En­g lish translations of medieval Latin works. 4. For discussion of the components of our digital model, see Margot E. Fassler, “Images and Chants for a Digital Model of the Cosmos,” Journal of the Alamire Foundation 9 (2017): 161–85.

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Notes to Pages 2–3

5. A proj­ect related to ours, which also includes a website and digital modeling of the cosmos, is “The Ordered Universe Proj­ect.” See the introduction by Richard Bower: https://­ordered​-­universe​ .­com​/­ou​-­team​-­on​-­t ime​-­2016​/­. The proj­ect focuses on Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1168–1253), scientist, theologian, and bishop of Lincoln, who served 1235–53. For the description of the digital model, see that part of the proj­ect called “The Medieval Cosmos.” The work does not incorporate relevant ­music, and the images are flat screen compared to our full-­dome work. It is introduced as follows: “The Medieval Cosmos is the first public version of a complete visualisation of the themes and subjects explored by Grosseteste in his scientific works. It ­w ill take shape in 2D and 3D versions, to take the viewer on a guided tour of the birth and creation of the medieval universe, meteorological phenomena from the rainbow to climactic conditions, the nature of the ele­ments, the relation between the heavens and the earth, comets, the notion of place and geometrical phenomena. Grosseteste’s power­f ul ability to conjure examples for the complex subjects he sought to explain, is the inspiration for the visualization. His examples, are, consistently, explained precisely and succinctly, allowing us, even at 800 years difference, to follow his thought pro­cesses, and, with our own interpretative toolkits, to draw out a repre­sen­ta­t ion of the concepts and phenomena about which he was so fascinated.” https://­ordered​-­universe​.­com​/­t he​-­medieval​-­cosmos​/­. 6. A situating of Hildegard among the g­ reat Christian thinkers commonly known as mystics is Bernard McGinn and Patricia Ferris McGinn, Early Christian Mystics: The Divine Vision of the Spiritual Masters (New York: Crossroad, 2003). 7. It is also pos­si­ble that Scivias III.xiii, the vision including the text of a truncated version of the play and the texts of the chants, is a ­later addition to the treatise. I have asked this question for many years, and this book examines this possibility by thinking about the interrelationships between the final vision and the rest of the treatise. 8. Hildegard’s musical compositions are found primarily in two twelfth-­century manuscripts, the musical fascicles of which have been printed in facsimile with useful notes and introductions; both of t­ hese manuscripts are digitized and available online, for which see Chapter 2. Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum: Dendermonde, St.-­Pieters & Paulusabdij ms. Cod. 9/Hildegard of Bingen contains a brief introduction to the entire manuscript by Peter van Poucke (Peer: Alamire, 1991). The facsimile edition of the two m ­ usic fascicles of the Riesencodex, Hildegard von Bingen Lieder: Faksimile Riesencodex (Hs. 2) der Hessischen Landesbibliothek Wiesbaden, fol. 466–481v, ed. Lorenz Welker (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1998), offers notes and commentary by Michael Klaper in both En­g lish (trans. Lori Kruckenberg) and German. The volume also includes full transcriptions of Hildegard’s sequence for the feast of St. Rupert, “O Ierusalem,” and the responsory “O uos imitatores,” a chant that survives in three neumed versions, one in Dendermonde, one in the Riesencodex, and yet another in Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (a compendium of vari­ous materials, primarily Hildegard’s letters), with scribes from the Disibodenberg, the Rupertsberg, and Wiesbaden. The Riesencodex has been digitized and can be consulted online at the website of the Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, for which see Chapter 2. Critical editions of the ­music of the play Ordo virtutum and of the Symphonia are: Hildegard of Bingen, Ordo virtutum: A Comparative Edition, ed. Vincent Corrigan (Lions Bay, BC: Institute of Medieval ­Music, 2016) and Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia: A Comparative Edition, ed. Vincent Corrigan (Lions Bay, BC: Institute of Medieval M ­ usic, 2013). The chants have been indexed with transcriptions provided in the CANTUS database and links to the digitized manuscripts: https://­cantus​.­uwaterloo​.­ca​/­. ­Until recently, the edition most scholars followed was Hildegard von Bingen, Lieder: Nach den Handschriften herausgegeben, ed. Pudentiana Barth, M. Immaculata Ritscher, and Joseph Schmidt-­Görg (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1969). Marianne Richert Pfau has edited the Symphonia as Songs of the Living Light in a series of booklets issued by the Hildegard Publishing Com­pany (Bryn Mawr, PA, 1995–­). The numbering systems for the vari­ous editions of the texts and m ­ usic vary, and Corrigan provides



Notes to Pages 4–7

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a comparative t­ able of them in his edition of the m ­ usic (pp. xxvi–­x xvii). For discussion of the rationales b ­ ehind Hildegard’s ways of ordering the pieces in the two collections, see Jennifer Bain, “­Music, Liturgy, and Intertextuality in Hildegard of Bingen’s Chant Repertory,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 209–34. 9. “Inde est quod ad communem hominum conuersationem ab illa interni concentus melodia regrediens, dulces in uocum etiam sono modos, quos in spirituali armonia discit et retinet, memor Dei, et in reliquiis cogitationum huiusmodi diem festum agens, sepius resultando delectatur, eosdemque modulos, communi humane musice instrumento gratiores, prosis ad laudem Dei et sanctorum honorem compositis, in ecclesia publice decantari facit.” As found in Guibert of Gembloux, Epistolae que in codice B.R. Brux. 5527–5534 inveniuntur, Pars I–­II, ed. Albert Derolez, CCCM 66/66A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988–89), no. XVIII, p. 231; see also The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994–2004), vol. 2, no. 104, p. 30. For further discussion of this passage, see Chapter 8. 10. For an overview of the milestones in Hildegard’s life, and the prob­lems in establishing them, see Michael Embach, “The Life of Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 11–36. 11. See Tova Leigh-­Choate, William T. Flynn, 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. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Debra L. Stoudt, and George Ferzoco, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 163–92. 12. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253, fol. 40v (Z). See Chapter 2 for further discussion of the manuscript. The chant is transcribed in Lieder: Faksimile Riesencodex, ed. Welker, with commentary by Klaper as found in all three manuscripts that preserve it: Z, Den, and R, p. 44. Variants show that the two ­earlier copies, ­t hose in Z and Den, are somewhat closer to each other. Klaper says: “The melodic transmission of Hildegard of Bingen’s chants is generally consistent, and the extant rec­ords of her chant collection in Dendermonde and Wiesbaden have obviously been carefully corrected” (32). Corrigan’s editions of the Symphonia and the Ordo virtutum ­w ill now enable scholars to make yet further observations about the states of the melodies. 13. See T ­ able 2.1 in Chapter 2. 14. This is the work of “Scribe 6” in Z, the so-­called Disibodenberg scribe. This person’s work began in the first fascicle on fol. 29r and copied ten letters, one of which is corrected by a hand from Zwiefalten; this scribe also copied some letters in fascicles 4 and 5 of the codex. All the letters copied by this Disibodenberg scribe are relatively early, dating from 1147/48 to ca. 1153. A ­ fter this time, the scribe no longer was copying letters for the collection. 15. An overview of the probable stages of production in Hildegard’s life, de­cade by de­cade, is offered in Honey Meconi, Hildegard of Bingen (Champaign-­Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018). 16. See Tova Leigh-­Choate, William T. Flynn, and Margot Fassler, “Hildegard as Musical Hagiographer: Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek 103 and Her Songs for Sts. Disibod and Ursula,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Kienzle, Stoudt, and Ferzoco, 193–220; and William T. Flynn, “Hildegard (1098–1179) and the Virgin Martyrs of Cologne,” in The Cult of St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, ed. Jane Cartwright (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016), 93–118. 17. “Postquam eadem uisio subtilitates diuersarum naturarum creaturarum, ac responsa et admonitiones tam minorum quam maiorum plurimarum personarum, et symphoniam harmonie celestium reuelationum, ignotamque linguam et litteras cum quibusdam aliis expositionibus, in quibus post predictas uisiones multa infirmitate multoque labore corporis grauata per octo annos duraueram, mihi ad explanandum ostenderat.” Trans. Barbara Newman in Hildegard, Symphonia, ed. Barbara Newman, in Peter Dronke et  al., eds., Hildegard of Bingen, Opera minora, CCCM 226 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 342–43, as found in Hildegard, LVM, pref., 8.

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Notes to Pages 8–10

18. Opera minora, 345–52. 19. See Chapter 2 for a study of the illuminated Scivias and its stages of production. 20. Two studies appeared in 1998, a year that saw many publications on Hildegard and her oeuvre, as it was the ninth centenary of her birth in 1098. Two in the realm of art history are Keiko Suzuki, Bildgewordene Visionen oder Visionserzählungen: Vergleichende Studie über die Visionsdarstellungen in der Rupertsberger “Scivias”-­Handschrift und im Luccheser “Liber Divinorum Operum”-­Codex der Hildegard von Bingen (Bern: P. Lang, 1998); and Lieselotte  E. Saurma-­Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im “Liber Scivias” der Hildegard von Bingen: die Wucht der Vision und die Ordnung der Bilder (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998). 21. Madeline Caviness, “Hildegard of Bingen: Some Recent Books,” Speculum 77 (2002): 113–20, at 120. Caviness herself, in my view, has produced the most convincing studies of the Scivias images to date, and she argues firmly for Hildegard’s control over their design. For further writings of Caviness on the Scivias illuminations, see her “Hildegard as Designer of the Illustrations to Her Works,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke, Warburg Institute Colloquia Series (London: Warburg Institute, 1998) and “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. The cata­logue of an exhibition devoted to Hildegard in 1998 is Hans-Jürgen Kotzur, Hildegard von Bingen, 1098–1179 (Mainz: P. Von Zabern, 1998). Sara Salvadori, Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images (Milan: Skira, 2019) is useful study of individual images and their intervisuality. My own book was in press when I was able to get a copy. 22. For further elaboration of this idea, see Chapter 2. 23. Nathaniel Campbell argues for Hildegard’s direct influence on the paintings as well. His theory is that the paintings w ­ ere first worked in metal. See his “Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-­Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript,” Eikón/ Imago 2 (2013): 1–68. See also his “Picturing Hildegard of Bingen’s Sight: Illuminating her Visions,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 257–79. 24. See Jeffrey Hamburger, “The ‘Vari­ous Writings of Humanity’: Johannes Tauler on Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Scivias,” in Visual Culture and the German ­Middle Ages: The New ­Middle Ages, ed. K. Starkey and H. Wenzel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 161–205, at 169. It is clear that the artwork Tauler is referencing, what­ever the medium, was a copy of the painting that accompanies Scivias I.i in Wiesbaden 1 (discussed in Chapter 3). 25. Katherine Foxhall, “Making Modern Migraine Medieval: Men of Science, Hildegard of Bingen and the Life of a Retrospective Diagnosis,” Medical History 58 (2014): 354–74. 26. Comparison of nearly any section of the LDO to Scivias can show how Hildegard’s thoughts changed and expanded over a period of a quarter c­ entury. Close comparison of the cosmologies found in the two treatises has been carried out principally by Georgina González Rabassó in her “Subtilitates naturae: Continuïtats i ruptures a la cosmologia d’Hildegarda de Bingen (1098–1179)” (PhD thesis, University of Barcelona, 2015) and subsequent publications; another useful comparative study of cosmology in the two treatises is José C. Santos Paz, “Visiones hildegardianas del cosmos: Del Scivias al Liber divinorum operum,” Studi medievali 52 (2001): 213–39. In the pre­sent study, I examine some ideas that appear in both treatises, especially in regard to themes directly relating to cosmology, but my focus is completely on Scivias, and especially on the illuminated copy of the treatise. 27. Hildegard of Bingen, Physica: Liber subtilitatum diversarum naturarum creaturarum. Textkritische Ausgabe, vol. 1: Text mit Berliner Fragment im Anhang; vol. 2: Apparate; vol. 3: Kommentiertes Register der deutschen Wörter, ed. Reiner Hildebrandt and Thomas Gloning (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010 and 14); Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete En­glish Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing, trans. Priscilla Throop (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1998); Hildegard of Bingen, Beate Hildegardis Cause et cure, ed. Laurence Moulinier, with Rainer Berndt, Rarissima



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mediaevalia 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003); Hildegard of Bingen, Holistic Healing (Cause et cure), trans. Patrick Madigan, S.J., ed. Mary Palmquist and John Kulas, OSB (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994). The Latin edition of P. Kaiser (Leipzig, 1903) was translated into German by Manfred Pawlik (Pattoch, 1989), which is the source of the En­g lish translation. 28. See note 4 in this chapter: LVM, 1, Prologue, lines 9–13. Volmar, Letter CXCV, lines 23–24: “Ubi tunc expositio naturarum diuersarum creaturarum?” 29. Cause et cure, ed. Moulinier, xi. See Reiner Hildebrandt, “Die überlieferungsgeschichtliche Komplexität der ‘Physica’ Hildegards von Bingen,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Litteratur 147/2 (2018): 141–61. 30. Dronke deals with two of t­ hese cruces l­ ater in the essay. 31. Peter Dronke, “The Four Ele­ments in the Thought of Hildegard of Bingen: Cosmology and Poetry,” Studi medievali 54 (2013): 905–22, at 908. I w ­ ill cite the work as the “Berlin Fragment” in the discussions to follow and ­w ill use Dronke’s En­g lish translations of select passages. 32. Georges Pon makes this point in his review of Moulinier’s edition in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 47/188 (2004): 415–17. 33. Of special relevance to this study are two books that deal with Hildegard’s contemporaries: Conrad Rudolph, The Mystical Ark: Hugh of St. Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth C ­ entury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Danielle B. Joyner, Painting the Hortus deliciarum: Medieval W ­ omen, Wisdom, and Time (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016).

Chapter 1 1. Clive Ruggles, Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2005), 190: “The a­ ctual positions of the distant stars in space relative to one another have only changed by minuscule amounts over many millennia.” 2. See David H. Kelley and Eugene F. Milone, Exploring Ancient Skies: An Encyclopedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy (New York: Springer, 2005), chap. 7.1.3.1, “Rec­ords of Lunar Eclipses,” 223–26; and Clemency Montelle, Chasing Shadows: Mathe­matics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse Reckoning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). For a discussion of the ways vari­ous Carolingian historians and chroniclers wove astronomical events into their writings, see Paul Edward Dutton, “Of Carolingian Kings and Their Stars,” in Charlemagne’s Mustache and Other Cultural Clusters of a Dark Age (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 93–127. 3. In his work as an astrotheologian, Ted Peters (God—­The World’s ­Future: Systematic Theology for a New Era [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2015]) has been most concerned with the question of ­whether or not Chris­t ian­ity and its tenets are ultimately threatened or even negated by the presence of other forms of life in the universe. Several other theologians have also been deeply engaged with t­ hese issues. Thomas O’Meara’s book Vast Universe: Extraterrestrials and Christian Revelation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012) offers a history of vari­ous Christian thinkers’ views of the probability that our earth is not the only planet inhabited by intelligent beings, including writers from the late medieval period: Aquinas, Guillaume de Vaurouillon, and Nicholas of Cusa. 4. The journal Archaeoastronomy ran from 1979 to 2003, when it was absorbed by the Journal for the History of Astronomy. 5. Niall Sharples, “The House as a Cosmology,” chap. 4 in Social Relations in L ­ ater Prehistory: Wessex in the First Millennium BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 174–237. He says: “The ­Middle Bronze Age h ­ ouses a­ dopted a circular structure that relates to the sky and the movement of the sun and which could be used to chart the temporal progression of days and years” (235). 6. Kelley and Milone, Exploring Ancient Skies. See J. V. Field, “Eu­ro­pean Astronomy in the First Millennium: The Archaeological Rec­ord,” in Astronomy Before the Telescope, ed. Christopher Walker (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 110–22.

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Notes to Pages 15–17

7. For a popu­lar view of the science under­lying the probable strike of the asteroid, see Peter Schulte et al., “The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-­Paleogene Boundary,” Science, n.s., 327/5970 (2010): 1214–18. 8. Richard A. Kerr, “Before the Dinosaurs’ Demise, a Clambake Extinction?” Science 337/6100 (2012): 1280. 9. A succinct overview of the intertwining nature of liturgical studies, ecotheology, and feminist theology can be found in Teresa Berger’s introduction to the volume she edited: Full of Your Glory: Liturgy, Cosmos, Creation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019). 10. Andrew Hicks, Composing the World: Harmony in the Medieval Platonic Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). Several other works have appeared more recently or are forthcoming. See, for example, Hicks, “The Regulative Power of the Harmony of the Spheres in Medieval Latin, Arabic and Persian Sources,” in The Routledge Companion to M ­ usic, Mind, and Well-­being, ed. Penelope Gouk et al. (New York: Routledge, 2018), 33–45. 11. See especially Chapters 7 and 8 for a closer look at her knowledge of ­music theory as reflected in her writings and her compositions. 12. Gad Freudenthal, “Cosmology: The Heavenly Bodies,” in The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler and T. M. Rudavsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 302–61, at 304. 13. Heliocentricity was known as a concept but rejected by most thinkers in the classical world for a variety of reasons. In his Sand Reckoner, Archimedes (d. 212 b.c.) spoke of the theories of Aristarchus of Samos, saying “he supposes that the fixed stars and the sun do not move, but that the earth revolves in the circumference of a circle about the sun.” As found in E. J. Dijksterhuis, Archimedes, first published 1938, translated into En­g lish by C. Dikshoorn (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1987), 362–63. 14. Hubert Le Bourdellès, L’Aratus Latinus: Étude sur la culture et la langue latines dans le Nord de la France au VIIIe siècle (Lille: Université de Lille, 1985); Marion Dolan, Astronomical Knowledge Transmission Through Illustrated Aratea Manuscripts, Historical and Cultural Astronomy (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017). 15. Freudenthal, “Cosmology,” 304. 16. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, in Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, trans. W. H. Stahl and R. Johnson, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), vol. 2, Book 8, p. 330 and Book 6, p. 224, respectively. See also James Evans, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 423. 17. See Bruce S. Eastwood, “The Astronomies of Pliny, Martianus Capella and Isidore of Seville in the Carolingian World,” in Science in Western and Eastern Civilization in Carolingian Times, ed. P. L. Butzer and D. Lohrmann (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1993), 161–80, at 169, and Christopher M. Graney, Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science Against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015). 18. See Chapter 4. 19. See Joyner, Painting, esp. 51–60. “When considered as part of a visual sequence about times, Herrad’s diagram maintains and exploits its ‘Macrobian’ otherworldly point of view” (58). 20. Alexis Kugel, Spheres: The Art of the Celestial Mechanic (Paris: J. Kugel, 2002). 21. An excellent photo a­ lbum of t­ hese models can be found in Hans Georg Gundel, Zodiakos: Tierkreisbilder in Altertum (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1992); t­ here are also many photos in Elly Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena: Celestial Cartography in Antiquity and the M ­ iddle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), and her report on the Mainz globe, “Featuring the First Greek Celestial Globe,” Globe Studies 55/56 (2009): 133–52. On “sphairopoiïa” (sphere making), see Evans, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy, 78–91, and Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena, 192–207.



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22. See, for example, the dramatic painting of the fall of Adam, against a cosmological backdrop, made for Scivias I.ii (see Figure 4.3). The four ele­ments are found in the corners of the painting. 23. Anton Pannekoek, A History of Astronomy (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1961), 115. 24. Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum: A Translation, trans. Michael Zellman-­Rohrer, 4 vols. (Boston: Selim  S. Nahas Press, 2010–12). A digitized copy owned by the University of Cambridge is online: http://­cudl​.­lib​.­cam​.­ac​.­u k​/­v iew​/­PR​-­INC​-­00000​-­A​-­00007​-­00002​-­00888​/­1. 25. Ronald Brashear and Daniel Lewis, Star Struck: One Thousand Years of the Art and Science of Astronomy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 23. 26. Sten Ebbesen, “The ‘Prior Analytics’ in the Latin West: 12th–13th Centuries,” Vivarium 48 (2010): 96–133. 27. Istvan Bodnar, “Aristotle’s Natu­ral Philosophy,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 edition), ed. Edward  N. Zalta, https://­plato​.­stanford​.­edu ​/­a rchives​/­spr2018​/­entries​ /­a ristotle​-­natphil​/­. In note 35 Bodnar says: “In Metaphysics 12.8, Aristotle opts for both the uniqueness and the plurality of the unmoved celestial movers. Each celestial sphere possesses the unmoved mover of its own—­presumably as the object of its striving, see Metaphysics 12.6—­whereas the mover of the outermost celestial sphere, which carries with its diurnal rotation the fixed stars, being the first of the series of unmoved movers also guarantees the unity and uniqueness of the universe.” 28. Edgar Laird, “Heaven and the Sphaera Mundi in the M ­ iddle Ages,” Culture and Cosmos 4 (2000): 10–35. 29. Michael Lapidge, “Imagery of Cosmic Dissolution,” in Lucan, ed. Charles Tesoriero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 289–323, at 293. 30. Michael Lapidge, “A Stoic Meta­phor in Late Latin Poetry: The Binding of the Cosmos,” Latomus 39 (1980): 817–37. 31. Lapidge, “Imagery,” 304–5. On Manilius, see Steven J. Green and Katharina Volk, eds., Forgotten Stars: Rediscovering Manilius’ Astronomica, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 32. See Chapter 8 for Hildegard’s own apocalyptic vision and the painting that depicts it. 33. Lucan, Pharsalia, trans. Jane Wilson Joyce (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), Book I, lines 72–80, p. 6. 34. Alexander A. Gurshtein, “The Origins of the Constellations: Some Provocative Hypotheses Link the Origins of the Constellations to the Precession of the Earth’s Axis and the Symbolic Imagery of Ancient ­Peoples,” American Scientist 85 (1997): 264–73. 35. Star Myths of the Greeks and Romans: A Sourcebook Containing the Constellations of Pseudo-­ Eratosthenes and the Poetic Astronomy of Hyginus, trans. and comm. Theony Condos (­Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1997). 36. Francesca Rochberg, “Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World: Reception and Transmission,” Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig-­Maximilians-­Universität, series 3, no. 4 (2010): 1–11; http://­w ww​.­cas​.­uni​-­muenchen​.­de​/­. See also J. M. Steele, “Astronomy and Culture in Late Babylonian Urek,” in Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy: Building Bridges Between Cultures, ed. L. N. Ruggles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 331–41. 37. See Chapter 4. In his notes to Hildegard’s description of ­t hese zoomorphic windheads, Nathaniel Campbell says: “Each description of the subordinate heads (crabs, stags, lambs, and serpents) is oriented as if the viewer is standing in the m ­ iddle of the circles, turning to face each cardinal direction and its principal head in turn; left and right then correspond to the viewer’s perspective. ­Here, too, the Lucca miniaturist has erred by interpreting right and left from the perspective of the animal head rather than the viewer” (“Imago expandit,” 49). 38. Vitruvius, De architectura libri decem, ed. Fritz Krohn (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1912), VI. iv. See Gustina Scaglia, “A Translation of Vitruvius and Copies of Late Antique Drawings in Buonaccorso Ghiberti’s Zibaldone,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 69 (1979): 1–30.

280

Notes to Pages 20–24

39. Michael G. Parker and Thomas M. Schmidt, eds., Scientific Explanation and Religious Belief: Science and Religion in Philosophical and Public Discourse (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005) offers an overview of con­temporary critiques concerning ID (Intelligent Design). 40. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, trans. Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2003), Book 2.5.18, p. 132. 41. See the introduction to the LDO, xvii. 42. Calcidius discussed a variety of possibilities. See Bruce S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian Re­nais­sance (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 330. 43. See Peter Dronke, The Spell of Calcidius: Platonic Concepts and Images in the Medieval West (Florence: Galluzzo, 2008), 21. 44. See Chapter 3. 45. “Mundi totius perfectionem ab opifice absolutam deo praeteriti operis textu secrevimus Platonicis dogmatibus, quoad mediocritas ingenii passa est, inhaerentes iuxta naturae contemplationem artificiosasque rationes.” Calcidius, On Plato’s “Timaeus,” ed. and trans. John Magee, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 41 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), Commentary, Second Part, 7 (119), 319. 46. Christina Hoenig, Plato’s Timaeus and the Latin Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 215–79. 47. A. Freire Ashbaugh, Plato’s Theory of Explanation: A Study of the Cosmological Account in the Timaeus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 7. For an overview, see G. E. R. Lloyd, “Greek Cosmologies,” in Ancient Cosmologies, ed. Carmen Blacker and Michael Loewe (London: Allen and Unwin, 1975), 198–224. 48. Pliny the Elder, Natu­ral History, Volume I: Books 1–2, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 330 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938), Book II, xx, 227–29. For discussion of other systems regarding tonal space and distances between the planets, see Gabriela Ilnitchi, “ ‘Musica Mundana,’ Aristotelian Natu­ral Philosophy, and Ptolemaic Astronomy,” Early M ­ usic History 21 (2002): 37–74, and Susan Rankin, “ ‘Naturalis Concordia Vocum Cum Planetis’: Conceptualizing the Harmony of the Spheres in the Early M ­ iddle Ages,” in Citation and Authority in Medieval and Re­ nais­sance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned, ed. Suzannah Clark and Elizabeth Eva Leach (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 3–19. 49. Hicks, Composing the World, 190. 50. Calcidius, On Plato’s “Timaeus,” ed. and trans. Magee, In tim §167 (pp. 272.3–273.6). This passage is discussed in Hicks, Composing the World, 56–61. 51. The play is studied in some detail in Chapter 7. 52. “Cum autem recordor tui, o mater Sion, in qua habitare debui, amarissima seruitia quibus subiecta sum inspicio. Et cum omne genus musicorum quod in te est ad memoriam duxero, uulnera mea attendo. Sed et cum recordor gaudii et laetitiae gloriae tuae, tunc uenena illa quibus polluta sunt detestor. O quo me uertam? Et quo fugiam?” Scivias I.iv.1. 119–24, 63; 110. 53. See Stephen Gersh, ­Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 2:493–595. 54. William Harris Stahl, in the introduction to his translation of Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), 15. See the image from a twelfth-­ century manuscript of Macrobius’s Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Parchment, 50 ff.; 23.9 × 14 cm.; southern France), date: ca. 1150; Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, ms. NKS 218 4o. 55. Macrobius, Commentary (trans. Stahl), II.i, p. 189. 56. Ibid., 193. 57. ­There is a useful section in En­g lish from ­Causes and Cures, “The Cosmos,” in Hildegard of Bingen, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Atherton (London: Penguin, 2001), 93–105; for this quotation,



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see p. 105. In the passage, Hildegard speaks of the importance of the firmament with its winds and turnings being at a distance from ­people, as its powers would harm them without this protection. See Chapter 3, with reference to Hildegard’s description of the pre-­lapsarian power of Adam’s voice. 58. Stephen C. McCluskey, “Boethius’s Astronomy and Cosmology,” in A Companion to Boethius in the ­Middle Ages, ed. Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 47–73. 59. Dronke, The Spell of Calcidius, 35. 60. “O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas, / terrarum caelique sator, qui tempus ab aevo / ire iubes stabilisque manens das cuncta moveri, / quem non externae pepulerunt fingere causae/materiae fluitantis opus, verum insita summi / forma foni livore carens—­/ tu cuncta superno/ducis ab exemplo.” I have followed the passage as edited and translated by Dronke in The Spell of Calcidius, 36–37. 61. See especially my “Angels and Ideas—­Hildegard’s Musical Hermeneutic as Found in Scivias and Reflected in ‘O Splendidissima Gemma,’ ” in Unversehrt und Unverletzt: Hildegards von Bingen Menschenbild und Kirchenverständnis Heute, ed. Rainer Berndt, S.J. and Maura Zátonyi, OSB (Munster: Aschendorff, 2015), 189–212. 62. C. Philipp E. Nothaft, “Augustine and the Shape of the Earth: A Critique of Leo Ferrari,” in Augustine and Science, ed. John Doody et al. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013), 99–113, at 109. 63. For Augustine’s exegesis as a response to the Pelagians and the Manicheans, see Pierre Descotes, “La Notion de ‘Testament’ chez saint Augustin,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 229 (2012): 167–91. 64. ­These writings are, in chronological order: On Genesis: Against the Manicheans (ca. 388–89); his Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis (393–95); the last three books of his Confessions (397–401); The Literal Meaning of Genesis (401–16); and his commentary on angels in City of God, Book IX (ca. 416). 65. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), XI.v.7, 224–25. 66. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, trans. Stephen A. Barney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 67. Max Lejbowicz, “Les Antecedents de la Distinction Isidorienne: ‘Astrologia/astronomia,’ ” in Observer, lire, écrire le ciel au Moyen Âge: Actes du colloque d’Orleans, 22–23 avril 1989, ed. Bernard Ribémont (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991), 173–212. 68. Bruce  S. Eastwood, “Early Medieval Cosmology, Astronomy, and Mathe­matics,” in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 2: Medieval Science, ed. David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 302–22, at 306; and (in the same volume) Stephen C. McCluskey, “Natu­ral Knowledge in the Early ­Middle Ages,” 286–301, at 287–89. 69. A useful overview of classical and patristic hexameral lit­er­a­ture is Frank Eggleston Robbins, “The Hexaemeral Lit­er­a­ture: A Study of the Greek and Latin Commentaries on Genesis” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1912). Hildegard’s stringent critique of divination and astrology is found in Scivias I.iii, the second half of the vision containing the Cosmic Egg. 70. For the text, melodies, and discussion, see Margot E. Fassler, ­Music in the Medieval West: Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 5–8. This text is also discussed in Joyner, Painting, 104–5. 71. See also my essay “The Cosmos and the Altar in Hildegard’s Scivias, and Select Sequence Texts,” in Full of Your Glory: Liturgy, Cosmos, Creation, ed. Teresa Berger (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2019), 165–88. 72. See Richard J. Clifford, “Creation in the Psalms,” in Creation in the Biblical Traditions, ed. Richard J. Clifford and John J. Collins (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of Amer­i­ca, 1992), 57–69. 73. Bernard F. Batto, “Creation Theology in Genesis,” in Creation in the Biblical Traditions, 16–38; John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011); William  P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecol­ogy of Won­der (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), especially chapter 3, “The Cosmic T ­ emple,” 33–77.

282

Notes to Pages 28–31

74. Ed Noort, “The Creation of Light in Genesis 1:1–5,” in The Creation of Heaven and Earth: Re-­ interpretations of Genesis I in the Context of Judaism, Ancient Philosophy, Chris­tian­ity, and Modern Physics, ed. George H. van Kooten (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 3–20, at 19. 75. Kelley and Milone, Exploring Ancient Skies, 498. 76. Immo Warntjes, “The Argumenta of Dionysius Exiguus and Their Early Recensions,” in Computus and Its Cultural Context in the Latin West (AD 300–1200), ed. Immo Warntjes and Dáibhi Ó Cróinín (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 40–111. Bonnie J. Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-­Strevens, The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-­Reckoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) discuss vari­ous cultural differences in calendars and notions of time. See also C. Philipp E. Nothaft, introduction to Medieval Latin Christian Texts on the Jewish Calendar: A Study with Five Editions and Translations, Time, Astronomy, and Calendars: Texts and Studies 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1–19, and his Scandalous Error: Calendar Reform and Calendrical Astronomy in Medieval Eu­rope (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 77. This was the system ­adopted in much of Ireland and other areas of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, leading to the g­ reat controversies reported in Bede’s history over the date of Easter. See Immo Warntjes and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, eds., The Easter Controversy of Late Antiquity and the Early ­Middle Ages: Its Manuscripts, Texts, and T ­ ables. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on the Science of Computus, Galway, 18–20 July 2008 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). 78. Immo Warntjes, The Munich Computus, Text and Translation: Irish Computistics Between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and Its Reception in Carolingian Times (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2010), xxxiv. 79. See Bede, On the Nature of Th ­ ings and On Times, trans. Calvin B. Kendall and Faith Wallis, Translated Texts for Historians 56 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010). Chapters 13–15 relate to calculating the date of Easter. 80. Eastwood, “The Astronomies of Pliny,” 166. 81. In his book Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Eu­rope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Stephen C. McCluskey lays out in g­ reat detail the science of astronomy in the period as dependent upon a practice working in ser­v ice of the liturgy. In his review of this excellent study, Bruce Eastwood (Isis 90/1 [1999]: 111–12) reminds us that ­there was indeed another side, a theoretical side, to the science of astronomy in the M ­ iddle Ages. 82. Germanicus drew upon a translation by Cicero and added other ele­ments from con­ temporary Latin authors. See Siobhan McElduff, Roman Theories of Translation: Surpassing the Source (New York: Routledge, 2013), 152–56. 83. Bruce S. Eastwood, “Origins and Contents of the Leiden Planetary Configurations (MS Voss. Q.79, fol. 93v), an Artistic Astronomical Schema of the Early M ­ iddle Ages,” Viator 14 (1983): 1–47; repr. as no. IV in Bruce S. Eastwood, The Revival of Planetary Astronomy in Carolingian and Post-­ Carolingian Eu­rope (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); with some corrections offered in Richard Mostert and Marco Mostert, “Using Astronomy as an Aid to Dating Manuscripts: The Example of the Leiden Aratea Planetarium,” Quaerendo 20 (1990): 248–61. Elly Dekker, “The Provenance of the Stars in the Leiden Aratea Picture Book,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010): 1–37. 84. Elly Dekker, “Carolingian Planetary Observations: The Case of the Leiden Planetary Configuration,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 39 (2008): 77–90. 85. The Astronomer, The Life of Emperor Louis, in Thomas F. X. Noble, trans., Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: The Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 292–93. 86. Scott Ashley, “What Did Louis the Pious See in the Night Sky? A New Interpretation of the Astronomer’s Account of Halley’s Comet, 837,” Early Medieval Eu­rope 21 (2013): 27–49.



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87. Ibid., 45. Ashley’s work shows that medieval rec­ords of planetary and astronomical observations contain much information of use to the modern historian of science. 88. William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum (The History of the En­glish Kings), ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. (London: Folio Society, 2014), chap. 225, p. 248. 89. Eastwood, “Early Medieval Cosmology,” 307–9. 90. The reference is to Eriugena’s Super hierarchiam (PL 122, 176C). Dronke discusses the prob­ lems with discerning the influence of Eriugena’s Periphyseon on the LDO in “The Allegorical World-­ Picture of Hildegard of Bingen: Revaluations and New Prob­lems,” in Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Burnett and Dronke, 1–16, at 13. It is hard to say, in ­t hese vari­ous cases, if the influence was direct or came through other authors, the most notable suspects being Honorius and Hugh of St.-­Victor. 91. Honorius’s writings are compendia of major sources that interested him, and he saw himself as both a teacher and pop­u ­lar­izer. For example, his De anima et de Deo, Book 2 draws upon Augustine’s Confessions and De Genesi ad litteram; Eriugena is a direct source for Honorius’s Clavis physicae; the first part of his De neocosmo draws upon Bede, whereas the second part combines the influence of Augustine with an Eriugenian overlay. Recently the unique contributions of Honorius and his success as a writer have been more greatly appreciated by scholars. 92. Periphyseon III, 633A–­B; CCCM 163, 22: “Omne enim quod intelligitur et sentitur nihil aliud est nisi non apparentis apparitio, occulti manifestatio, negati affirmatio, incomprehensibilis comprehensio, ineffabilis fatus, inaccessibilis accessus, inintelligibilis intellectus, incorporalis corpus, superessentialis essentia, informis forma, immensurabilis mensura, innumerabilis numerus, carentis pondere pondus, spiritualis incrassatio, inuisibilis uisibilitas, illocalis localitas, carentis tempore temporalitas, infiniti diffinitio, incircumscripti circumsciptio, et caetera quae puro intellectu et cogitantur et perspiciuntur et quae memoriae sinibus capi nesciunt et mentis aciem fugiunt.” 93. On the work of Herrad, including her computus and understanding of liturgical time reckoning, see Joyner, Painting, 95–112. 94. Hildegard of Bingen, Homilies on the Gospels, ed. and trans. Beverly Kienzle (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), no. 52, The First Sunday of Advent, 1, 190–92, at 191. 95. For Bede’s influence and the building upon it as an example, see C. Philipp  E. Nothaft, “Bede’s Horologium: Observational Astronomy and the Prob­lem of the Equinoxes in Early Medieval Eu­rope (c. 700–1100),” En­glish Historical Review 130 (2015): 1079–1101. 96. Marco Zuccato, “Arabic Singing Girls, the Pope, and the Astrolabe: Arabic Science in Tenth-­ Century Eu­rope,” Viator 45 (2014): 99–120. 97. The treatise on the astrolabe once attributed to Hermannus (see, for example, J. Drecker, “Hermannus Contractus über das Astrolabe,” Isis 16 [1931]: 200–219) is now no longer believed to be his. See also David Juste, “Hermann der Lahme und das Astrolab in Spiegel das neuesten Forschung,” in Hermannus Contractus: Ein Reichenauer Mönch und Universalgelehrter des 11. Jahrhunderts, ed. F. Heinzer and T. Zotz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016), 273–84. For the probable influence of this treatise, whoever may have written it, on Wilhelm, see Joachim Wiesenbach, “Wilhelm von Hirsau: Astrolab und Astronomie im 11. Jahrhundert,” in Hirsau: St. Peter und Paul, 1091–1991, ed. Klaus Schreiner (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss, 1991), 2:109–56, esp. 128–30. 98. See Margot E. Fassler, “Adventus at Chartres: Ritual Models for Major Pro­cessions,” in Ceremonial Culture in Pre-­Modern Eu­rope, ed. Nicholas Howe (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 13–62. 99. MS Bodl. 614; the manuscript is digitized, and the astrolabe is depicted on fol. 35v. Joyner, Painting, discusses the object held in the hands of Herrad’s depiction of astronomy, within the copy of her painting on the liberal arts (see Joyner, Painting, fig. 46, p. 70). The object is not an astrolabe.

284

Notes to Pages 33–36

100. C. Philipp  E. Nothaft, “Roman vs. Arabic Computistics in Twelfth-­Century ­England: A Newly Discovered Source (Collatio Compoti Romani et Arabici),” Early Science and Medicine 20 (2015): 187–208. 101. For discussion of the mathe­matics in al-­K hwarizmi’s solar eclipse t­ ables, and their dependence upon Indian astronomy, see H.-­R . Giahi Yazdi, “Al-­K hwārizmī and Annular Solar Eclipse,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 65 (2011): 499–517. 102. The Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, trans. Winthrop Wetherbee (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973, 1990), 32–33. 103. Ibid., 118. 104. Barbara Obrist, “Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology,” Speculum 72 (1997): 33–84, at 75–76. 105. The most useful comparisons, in a large general sense, are to the writings of Honorius Augustodunensis. Although specific phrases cannot be found and ­there are points of difference, the large-­scale themes and pedagogical purposes of Scivias resonate powerfully with ­t hose of Honorius. Of special use in grasping general ideas of Honorius regarding creation and cosmos are Wanda Cizewski, “The Doctrine of Creation in the First Half of the Twelfth ­Century: Selected Authors (Rupert of Deutz, Honorius Augustodunensis, Peter Abelard, and Hugh of St. Victor)” (PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1983), and Daniel Yingst, “Towers in the Mud: Honorius Augustodunensis Through the Lens of Pedagogy” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2017). 106. For overviews, see S. Draxler and M.  E. Lippitsch, “Astronomy in the Medieval Liber floridus,” Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry 16 (2016): 421–28; and Nadezhda Kavrus-­ Hoffmann and Albert Derolez, “Codex Aldenburgensis, Cotton Fragments Vol. 1, and the Origins of the Liber Floridus,” Manuscripta 49/2 (2005): 139–63. The treatise was copied several times in the ­Middle Ages, with a variety of omissions and additions: Navrus-­Hoffmann and Derolez: “it is well known that ­t here is no copy that contains all the chapters of the original Liber Floridus and that all copies, on the other hand, contain additional texts not pre­sent in the original work” (144). On the ­later copies and their interrelationships and natures, see Hanna Vorholt, Shaping Knowledge: The Transmission of the “Liber floridus” (London: Warburg Institute, 2017). To date, the most complete study of the treatise is Albert Derolez, The Making and Meaning of the “Liber floridus”: A Study of the Original Manuscript Ghent, University Library MS 92 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015); he also edited the facsimile. Some figures from this manuscript can be found in Chapter 5. 107. Dronke, “The Allegorical World-­Picture,” 12. 108. Valerie I. J. Flint, “Honorius Augustodunensis’ Imago Mundi,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 49 (1982): 7–153. 109. Greek astronomy was not only received and translated by Islamic astronomers; it was commented upon as well. See, for example, George Saliba, “Islamic Reception of Greek Astronomy,” in The Role of Astronomy in Society and Culture, ed. David Valls-­Gabaud and Alexander Boksenberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 149–65: “I hope the reader can now see how this Greek tradition was indeed deeply questioned and dissected, and its constituent parts ­were first critiqued, modified, and then reconstructed, added to, mathematically rescued, and fully overhauled” (165). 110. Conrad Rudolph provides an overview in his examination of visual repre­sen­ta­t ions of art in the twelfth ­century: “In the Beginning: Theories and Images of Creation in Northern Eu­rope in the Twelfth ­Century,” Art History 22 (1999): 3–55. 111. On the authenticity of t­ hese works, see the Introduction to this book.



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Chapter 2 1. See Kathryn Kerby-­Fulton, “Prophet and Reformer: ‘Smoke in the Vineyard,’ ” in The Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 70–90. 2. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Salem X.16 is a late twelfth-­century illuminated Scivias but not made on the Rupertsberg. This codex is discussed further in several chapters in this book. 3. On editions and translations of Scivias followed ­here, see the Introduction, n. 4. 4. See Dinah Wouters, “Didactic Strategies in the Visionary Trilogy of Hildegard of Bingen,” Sacris Erudiri 54 (2015): 235–63. 5. Ibid., 236. 6. For an introduction to the concept of horizontal learning, see Micol Long, Tjamke Snijders, and Steven Vanderputten, eds., Horizontal Learning in the High ­Middle Ages: Peer-­to-­Peer Knowledge Transfer in Religious Communities (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 9–16. As far as can be determined, Hildegard was the leading teacher, but virtually every­thing she created required communal resources and understanding. 7. Another work that also looks at Hildegard from an interdisciplinary mode of study is King-­ Lenzmeier, Hildegard of Bingen: An Integrated Vision. This overview has much to recommend it. Matthew Fox’s study of the paintings in Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen situates them in a theological context and demonstrates long thinking about the meanings of the artworks. Newman, in her ­Sister of Wisdom, provides theological contexts for many of the paintings in Wiesbaden 1, and her remarks have been exceedingly valuable for the pre­sent study. 8. Lori Kruckenberg provides an overview of learning and libraries in medieval ­women’s communities in her essay “Literacy and Learning in the Lives of W ­ omen Religious in Medieval Germany,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 52–82. 9. On the founding of the monastery of the Disibodenberg, see Franz J. Felton, “St. Disibod and the History of the Disibodenberg up to the Beginning of the 12th ­Century,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Kienzle, Stoudt, and Ferzoco, 39–56. For an overview of the situation of books and their keeping in medieval monasteries, see Eva Schlotheuber and John T. McQuillen, “Books and Libraries with Monasteries,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, vol. 2: The High and Late ­Middle Ages, ed. Alison I. Beach and Isabelle Cochelin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 975–97. 10. Dronke says of this list found in the critical edition of Scivias: “As Hildegard names no ‘auctores’ what­ever within ‘Scivias’, the question of her sources is particularly difficult and delicate. The ten pages of references (653–62) given ­here—­even if many suggested sources and analogues can and should be questioned anew—­make some notable advances.” See Peter Dronke, “Problemata Hildegardiana,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 16 (1982): 97–131, at 98. 11. A classic overview of the developing genres in the period is Artur M. Landgraf, Introduction à l’histoire de la littérature théologique de la scholastique naissante, translated from German by Louis-­B. Geiger (Montreal: Institut d’études médiévales, 1973). 12. Yingst, “Towers in the Mud,” 233. 13. For an accessible overview of the Lombard and commentaries upon him, see Philipp Rosemann, The Story of a G ­ reat Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s “Sentences” (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2007). For the Lombard on the Psalms, see Marcia L. Colish, “Psalterium Scholasticorum: Peter Lombard and the Emergence of Scholastic Psalms Exegesis,” Speculum 67 (1992): 531–48. 14. See Thomas Finn, “The Sacramental World in the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” Theological Studies 69 (2008): 557–82.

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Notes to Pages 42–46

15. A brief comparison between Hugh’s De sacramentis and Hildegard’s Scivias is found in Barbara Newman’s excellent introduction to the En­g lish translation of Scivias by ­Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (1990). 16. Ranier Berndt, “La Raison du salut: L’influence d’­Hugues de Saint-­Victor sur la formation des sommes de théologie aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in L’École de Saint-­Victor de Paris: Influence et rayonnement du Moyen Age à l’époque moderne, ed. Dominque Poirel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 285–98. For an example of a mid-­t welfth-­century copy of the De sacramentis, found at the Cistercian Abbey of Altenberg, see Bonn, Universitäts-­und Landesbibliothek, MS S 292,1. Hugh was popu­lar with Cistercians, as can be seen in Rudolf Goy, Die Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St. Viktor (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1976). 17. Aliza Cohen-­Mushlin, Scriptoria in Medieval Saxony: St.  Pancras in Hamersleben (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), esp. p. 21. 18. On the Victorine sequences and their relationship to Hugh’s writings and to the religious ideals of this community, see Margot E. Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-­Century Paris, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011). 19. For overviews of Hildegard’s perspectives on the role of w ­ omen in the theological enterprise and ­t hose of other medieval w ­ omen as well, see three books by Barbara Newman: ­Sister of Wisdom; From Virile W ­ oman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Lit­er­a­ture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); and God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the ­Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). 20. See Kerby-­Fulton, “Prophet and Reformer.” 21. Danielle Joyner’s monograph Painting the Hortus deliciarum (2016) on Herrad of Hohenberg’s now lost Hortus Deliciarum is an art historical analy­sis of this extraordinary work, written in the last quarter of the twelfth ­century, which also included a group of chants. On the movement to reform ­houses of ­women and attend to their education in the twelfth ­century, see especially Fiona J. Griffiths, The Garden of Delights: Reform and Re­nais­sance for ­Women in the Twelfth ­Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Carolyn Muessig compares Hildegard and Herrad, placing the former in a Cistercian sphere of influence and the latter in a Victorine: “Hildegard of Bingen and Herrad of Landsberg,” in Medieval Monastic Education, ed. George Ferzoco and Carolyn Muessig (New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), 87–104. 22. The treatise is discussed again in Chapter 6. 23. See discussion in Chapter 3. Careful codiocological and paleographical study of Engelberg 103 is wanting at pre­sent, but ­t here are at least two main hands, and of somewhat dif­fer­ent styles and dates. 24. Felix Heinzer, “Der Hirsauer ‘Liber Ordinarius,’ ” Revue bénédictine 102 (1992): 309–47, esp. 343–44 (where Engelberg 103 is Hesbert’s manuscript 674); Lori Kruckenberg, “Zur Rekonstruktion des Hirsauer Sequentiars,” Revue bénédictine 109 (1999): 186–207. 25. Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. 23 Nr. 141. 26. See my “Hildegard and the Dawn Song of Lauds: An Introduction to Benedictine Psalmody,” in Psalms in Community: Jewish and Christian Textual, Liturgical, and Artistic Traditions, ed. Harold W. Attridge and Margot E. Fassler (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Lit­er­a­ture, 2003), 215–39. 27. Albert Derolez, “Neue Beobachtungen zu den Handschriften der visionären Werke Hildegards von Bingen,” in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historichen Umfeld, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Alexander Reverchon (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2000), 461–88, and Michael Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen: Studien zu ihrer Überlieferung und Rezeption im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003). 28. Cohen-­Mushlin, Scriptoria in Medieval Saxony, and A Medieval Scriptorium: Sancta Maria Magdalena de Frankendal, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990).



Notes to Pages 46–47

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29. Jeffrey Hamburger, “The Hand of God and the Hand of the Scribe: Craft and Collaboration at Arnstein,” in Die Bibliothek des Mittelalters als dynamischer Prozess, ed. Michael Embach, Claudine Moulin, and Andrea Rapp, Trierer Beiträge zu den Historischen Kulturwissenschaften 3 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2012), 53–78, plates 5–9, 19–24, 27, 32–35, 39. 30. Alison I. Beach, ­Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-­Century Bavaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 31. See, for example, Michael Norton and Amelia  J. Carr, “Liturgical Manuscripts, Liturgical Practice, and the W ­ omen of Klosterneuburg,” Traditio 66 (2011): 67–169. 32. Marianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkötter, Die Echtheit des Schrifttums der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen: Quellenkritische Untersuchungen (Cologne: Böhlau, 1956) remains foundational for the study of the manuscripts. More recent work on the manuscripts includes excellent studies by Albert Derolez, such as “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; “The Genesis of Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber divinorum operum: The Codicological Evidence,” in Litterae Textuales: Essays Presented to G. I. Lieftinck, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: Van Gendt, 1972), 23–33; “Deux notes concernant Hildegarde de Bingen,” Scriptorium 27 (1973): 291–95; “Neue Beobachtungen”; and the notes to the critical editions of Hildegard’s trilogy, most especially ­t hose for the Liber divinorum operum (Book of Divine Works) provided by him and Peter Dronke. An overview of the manuscripts of Scivias is given at the opening of the critical edition of Scivias by Führkötter and Carlevaris, xxxii–­lvi, but none of the manuscripts is studied in detail. Michael Embach writes not only of the manuscripts prepared during Hildegard’s lifetime but especially of the transmission and reception of ­t hese writings in ­later periods: Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen, and Michael Embach and Martina Wallner, “Der ‘Conspectus’ der Handschriften Hildegards von Bingen (1098–1179)—­ein Werkstattbericht,” in Die Bibliothek des Mittelalters als dynamischer Prozess, ed. Michael Embach, Claudine Moulin, and Andrea Rapp (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2012), 79–88. A brief overview of the ways of working with the scripts and the prob­lems they raise is my “Hildegard of Bingen and Her Scribes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Jennifer Bain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 280–99. Wiesbaden 1 was seen and studied before it went missing, most notably by F. W. E. Roth, “Die Codices des Scivias der hl. Hildegardis  O.S.B., in Heidelberg, Wiesbaden und Rom in ihrem Verhältnis zu einander und der Editio princeps 1513,” Quartalblätter des historischen Vereins für das Grossherzogtum Hessen 1 (1887): 18–26. A twin manuscript to the Riesencodex was extant in Vienna ­until at least 1800 as Vienna, Hofbibliothek 731; for discussion of this manuscript, see Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia: Gedichte und Gesänge, Lateinisch und Deutsch, ed. Walter Berschin and H. Schipperges (Gerlingen: Lambert Schneider, 1995), 246–47. 33. On the relationship between Hildegard and Guibert, see especially Fiona J. Griffiths, “Monks and Nuns at Rupertsberg: Guibert of Gembloux and Hildegard of Bingen,” in Partners in Spirit: ­Women, Men, and Religious Life in Germany, ed. Fiona Griffiths and Julie Hotchin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 149–69. 34. See Sarah L. Higley, Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); the work is also edited in Hildegard of Bingen, Opera minora. 35. See Alison I. Beach, “ ‘Mathild de Niphin’ and the Female Scribes of Twelfth-­Century Zwiefalten,” in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Eu­rope: The Hull Dialogue, ed. V. Blanton, V. O’Mara, and P. Stoop (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 33–50. 36. The complex landscape regarding double monasteries and relationships between men and ­women in German-­speaking regions during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is explored by several scholars in the essays found in Partners in Spirit, ed. Griffiths and Hotchin.

288

Notes to Pages 48–51

37. For the letters, see Hildegard of Bingen, Epistolarium, ed. L. van Acker (91 and 91A) and L. van Acker and M. Klaes Hachmöller (91B), 3 vols., CCCM 91, 91A, 91B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991– 2001); and The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman. The stylistic differences between Hildegard’s letters produced with the help of Volmar as opposed to t­ hose written with the aid of Guibert of Gembloux are significant, according to Mike Kestemont, Sara Moens, and Jeroen Deploige, “Collaborative Authorship in the Twelfth ­Century: A Stylometric Study of Hildegard of Bingen and Guibert of Gembloux,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 30 (2015): 199–224, https://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1093​/­l lc​/­fqt063. 38. John Van Engen’s penetrating analy­sis of Volmar’s work on the vari­ous collections of Hildegard’s letters is fundamental for beginning to understand Volmar’s and Hildegard’s ultimate relationship regarding copying and transmission. See Van Engen, “Letters and the Public Persona of Hildegard of Bingen,” in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem historischen Umfeld: Internationaler wissenschaftlicher Kongress zum 900 jährigen Jubiläum, 13–19 September 1998, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Alexander Reverchon (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2000), 375–418. For an overview of Hildegard’s epistolary agenda, see Christopher  D. Fletcher, “Reading Hildegard of Bingen’s Letters,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 105–24. 39. This manuscript is not yet online, and so readers cannot easily reference it at pre­sent. However, the contents are tabulated in both Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit des Schrifttums and Epistolarium, ed. Van Acker and Klaes-­Hachmöller. 40. http://­w ww​.­manuscripta​-­mediaevalia​.­de​/­dokumente​/­html​/­obj90032412,T. 41. See Van Engen, “Letters and the Public Persona of Hildegard of Bingen.” Much of the essay is dedicated to a series of questions about the letters, their authenticity, and what the surviving evidence can reveal about Volmar’s and Hildegard’s ways of working with the material. 42. Beach, “ ‘Mathild de Niphin’ ” is a study of scribes from the first half of the twelfth ­century at Zwiefalten, and so slightly before this letter codex was copied. 43. See Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit des Schrifttums, x, and Epistolarium 91, ed. Van Acker, part 1, xxii–­x xiii, and Van Acker/Klaes-­Hachmöller, Epistolarium 91B, ed. Van Acker and Klaes-­Hachmöller, x–­x iii. 44. A useful introduction to the Abbey of Zwiefalten in the twelfth ­century, part of the Hirsau reform, is found in Felix Heinzer, “ ‘Scalam ad coelos’: Poésie liturgique et image programmatique. Lire une miniature du livre du chapitre de l’abbaye de Zwiefalten,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 44/176 (2001): 329–48. The list in Epistolarium, ed. Van Acker and Klaes-­Hachmöller, claims that Scribe 15 in their list is the same person called A1 by Schrader and Führkötter, and who appears in the goods’ list. Scribe 15 copied letters dating to 1153–54. 45. See the Introduction for an example of copying by Scribe 6, the Disibodenberg scribe in Z, and a leaf from Z that contains one of Hildegard’s Scivias chants. 46. Jaakko Tahkokallio argues that the presence of multiple hands is one way of distinguishing the conditions of production of books in the ­later ­Middle Ages: the presence of multiple hands signifies institutional production, whereas books copied by a single scribe ­were more likely to have been made by secular professionals. See “Counting Scribes: Quantifying the Secularization of Medieval Book Production,” Book History 22 (2019): 1–42. 47. See my “Volmar, Hildegard, and St.  Matthias,” in Medieval ­Music in Practice: Studies in Honor of Richard Crocker, ed. Judith A. Peraino, Miscellanea 7 (Middleton, WI: American Institute of Musicology, 2013), 85–109. Letter 188, from the priests Conrad and Bertolf to Hildegard and dated to sometime before 1153, closes with a greeting to “your provost, your s­ isters, and all t­ hose who dwell with you”; Hildegard, The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, 2:153. 48. See especially the several t­ ables in Derolez, “Neue Beobachtungen.”



Notes to Pages 51–63

289

49. See especially the praising and fearful letter 195, which is by Volmar to Hildegard, and is dated to around 1170. 50. Scivias III.xiii.14, 661–64, 636, 536: “Sed si quis haec uerba digiti Dei temere absconderit et ea per rabiem suam minuerit aut in alienum locum alicuius humani sensus causa abduxerit et ita deriserit, ille reprobatus sit. Et digitus Dei conteret illum.” 51. Jennifer Bain, “History of a Book: Hildegard of Bingen’s ‘Riesencodex’ and World War II,” Plainsong and Medieval M ­ usic 27 (2018): 143–70. 52. I am grateful to the Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, and especially to Abbess Dorothea Flandera, for making ­t hese photo­graphs available for my study. 53. This extraordinary copy has been published in facsimile: Liber scivias: Rüdesheimer Codex: aus der Benediktinerinnenabtei St. Hildegard (Graz: Akademische Druck-­u. Verlagsanstalt, 2013). 54. See the Introduction, n. 4 for a full citation of the edition: CCCM 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978). Dronke’s critique is found in his “Problemata Hildegardiana.” 55. Just as serious as the lack of study of affiliation is the fact that the critical edition is not made from a “best manuscript.” Rather it is a composite and so does not provide an ­actual medieval text. Dronke says: “the edition offers a normalized text. This might in general be defensible in a series such as ‘Corpus Christianorum’, but is, in the exceptional circumstances of Hildegard’s MS transmission, a tragic m ­ istake.” Dronke, “Problemata Hildegardiana,” 99. 56. For work to date, see Embach, Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen, 36–56. 57. The outline of W in Appendix 1 has been adapted from a chart of the makeup of the manuscript by Albert Derolez, but I have added the general state of the copying of the chapter headings. 58. For a list of fascicles and other information, see Appendix 2. 59. See Appendix 2. 60. The fourth hand in W copied some headings and has only a minimal role in the manuscript; as a result, the samples of this hand are difficult to study and position in the t­ able. 61. See Derolez in the introduction to the critical edition of the LDO, xcix, where he talks about the two texts that w ­ ere interpolated into R ­a fter Hildegard’s death. In ­earlier scholarship the Riesencodex was assumed to have been copied and compiled a­ fter her death as a result of the two interpolated texts that reference this event and w ­ ere not initially recognized as additions. It is now assumed that R was indeed copied and produced during the final years of Hildegard’s life. 62. ­There is no evidence that any of the work was copied by Hildegard herself, and if this is so, we do not have her handwriting, h ­ ere or in the necrology or in the letter collections described above. She worked apparently (exclusively?) on wax tablets. 63. Epistolarium, ed. Van Acker and Klaes-­Hachmöller (91B), 222. According to this list it is also Hand 9 in the Vienna letter manuscript. 64. Fassler, “Volmar, Hildegard, and St. Matthias.” 65. “Vnde in amore meo scrutatus est in animo suo, ubi illum inueniret, qui uiam salutis curreret. Et quendam inuenit et eum amauit, agnoscens quod fidelis homo esset et similis sibi in aliqua parte laboris illius qui ad me tendit. Tenensque eum simul cum illo in omnibus his per supernum studium contendit, ut absconsa miracula mea reuelarentur. Et idem homo super semetipsum se non posuit, sed ad illum in ascensione humilitatis et in intentione bonae uoluntatis, quem inuenit, se in multis suspiriis inclinauit.” Scivias, Preface, 67–75, 5; 60. 66. Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of Divine Works, trans. Campbell, 30. 67. Not much can be told, however, about the probable dating of W from the involvement of Scribe 3 in both its production and in the production of R, especially in the m ­ usic fascicles. It is quite pos­si­ble that the two fascicles that contain the ­music in R ­were produced in­de­pen­dently of the manuscript as a w ­ hole. Klaper says of the idea that R was prepared with the inclusion of the chant fascicles

290

Notes to Pages 64–68

in mind: “Not only does the breaking off of the numbering of the gatherings contradict this notion, but also the stage of the parchment on f. 466r, which is conspicuously darkened and spotted and where its ink has greatly suffered (and therefore was touched up in some places with a darker ink). This suggests that this fascicle was kept separate for some time.” Lieder: Faksimile, 24.

Chapter 3 1. The so-­called Worms Bible (BL, Harley MSS 2803 and 2804), ascribed by Aliza Cohen-­Mushlin in A Medieval Scriptorium to the Augustinians of Frankenthal (near Worms, and around forty-­five miles from Bingen), and dated to the mid-­twelfth ­century, provides a fine point of comparison through its author portraits. Th ­ ere are two portraits of Jerome, and that opening the first volume of the Bible (Cohen-­Mushlin, A Medieval Scriptorium, fig. 51, p. 97) has three towers, like the architectural frame of the Hildegard portrait, and the roof of the center tower is comparable in style to the roofs of the Hildegard portrait. In this portrait, a monk holds onto Jerome’s writing t­able and extends his right arm, holding an inkhorn. The Evangelists’ portraits, like that of Jerome, show the authors holding pens and sometimes knives as well, for steadying the page as well as scraping away ­mistakes. 2. For history on the subject, see Michelle Brown, “The Role of the Wax Tablet in Medieval Literacy: A Reconsideration in Light of a Recent Find from York,” British Library Journal 20/1 (Spring 1994): 1–15. 3. See also the study of the portrait in Saurma-­Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im “Liber scivias,” 25–31, and Fassler, “Volmar, Hildegard, and St. Matthias.” 4. See Iohannes Hymmonides, diaconus Romanus, Vita Gregorii I Papae, ed. Lucia Castaldi, vol. 1: La tradizione manoscritta (Florence: Galluzzo, 2004). 5. Leo Treitler, “Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant,” Musical Quarterly 60 (1974): 333–72, contains more details about the Carolingian development of the Gregory legends. 6. Both volumes of the manuscript are digitized and online, and the first volume contains the Gregory portrait: Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 390: Antiphonarium officii (Antiphonary for liturgy of the hours) (https://­w ww​.­e​-­codices​.­ch​/­en​/­list​/­one​/­csg​/­0390), at p. 13. On the manuscript, see Henry Parkes, “­Behind Hartker’s Antiphoner: Neglected Fragments of the Earliest Sankt Gallen Tonary,” Early ­Music History 37 (2018): 183–246. 7. See Hamburger, “The Hand of God and the Hand of the Scribe.” 8. “Visiones uero quas uidi, non eas in somnis, nec dormiens, nec in phrenesi, nec corporeis oculis aut auribus exterioris hominis, nec in abditis locis percepi, sed eas uigilans et circumspecta in pura mente, oculis et auribus interioris hominis, in apertis locis, secundum uoluntatem Dei accepi.” Scivias, Protestificatio, 43–47, 4; 60. The reference h ­ ere, and all subsequent references, is to the book, chapter, section, line numbers, and pages of the critical edition (Führkötter and Carlevaris); t­ hese are followed by the page or pages of the En­g lish translation (Hart and Bishop), which is set into the body of the text. The Protestificatio (or preface) to the entire treatise has no chapter or section numbers. I have put the quotations from the visions themselves in italics throughout, to separate them from Hildegard’s commentary on the texts of the ­actual visions; in this practice, I follow the critical edition, where the texts of the visions are in a dif­fer­ent font. This does not happen in the Protestificatio, as Hildegard is quoting t­ here and so the text is handled somewhat differently. 9. The portraits found in the corners of pages of the Lucca LDO are dated to the second quarter of the thirteenth c­ entury and w ­ ere not made on the Rupertsberg. 10. See notes to the critical edition of Scivias by Führkötter and Carlevaris, xxxix–­x li for discussion of Heidelberg, University Library, MS Salem X.16. 11. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, vol. 2, trans. Baird and Ehrman, Letter 200, p. 174.



Notes to Pages 68–71

291

12. “Et ecce quadragesimo tertio temporalis cursus mei anno, cum caelesti uisioni magno timore et tremula intentione inhaererem, uidi maximum splendorum, 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.’ ” Scivias, Protestificatio, 5–10, 3; 59. 13. “Factum est in millesimo centesimo quadragesimo primo Filii Dei Iesu Christi incarnationis anno, cum quadraginta duorum annorum septemque 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, . . .” Scivias I, Protestificatio, 24–34, 3–4; 59. 14. All t­ hese phrases are quoted in the Protestificatio to Scivias I. 15. “. . . ​hoc est quod creatis aliis creaturis Verbum Dei in forti uoluntate Patris et in amore supernae suauitatis inspexit pauperem et fragilem materiam mollis et tenacis fragilitatis humanitatis tam malorum quam bonorum procreandorum hominum in imo insensibilitatis et ponderositatis suae detentam et necdum acuto et uitali flatu excitatam; et eam calefaciens, ita quod caro et sanguis effecta est: id est in uiriditate calorum et infundens, . . .” Scivias II.i.7, 215–23, 116; 152. 16. “. . . ​qui manifeste ostendit in fortitudine creaturarum Dei hominem profundae considerationis de limo terrae mirabili modo multae gloriae factum degentem, et uirtute earundem creaturarum ita obuolutum quod ab eis nullo modo separari ualet” (of all the strengths of God’s creation, humankind’s is most profound, made in a wondrous way with ­great glory from the dust of the earth and so entangled with the strength of the rest of creation that it can never be separated from them). Scivias I.iii.16, 293–97, 48; 98. 17. En­g lish from Hildegard of Bingen, Holistic Healing, 50. Latin from Hildegard of Bingen, Beate Hildegardis Cause et cure, ed. Moulinier with Berndt, II.45, pp. 75–76: “Adam enim cum terra fuit, ignis eum excitauit, et aer eum suscitauit, et aqua eum perfudit, quod totus mouebatur. Tunc deus soporem in eum misit, et in hiis uiribus coctus est, ita quod caro eius per ignem estuabat et quod per aerum spirauit, et quod sicut molendinum aqua in eo circuiuit. Qui postquam euigilauit, propheta celestium fuit et sciens in omni ui creature et in omni arte erat.” In the Berlin Fragment, Hildegard said: “Fire is the ­human marrow, air the ­human voice, ­waters the ­human veins, earth the ­human bones”; Dronke, “The Four Ele­ments,” 909. 18. For more on the sleep of Adam, see Barbara Faes, “Interpretazioni tardo-­a ntiche e medievali del sopore di Adamo,” in Adam, le premier homme, ed. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Florence: Galluzzo, 2012), 21–47. Hildegard is not discussed in this essay. 19. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, no. 385, trans. Baird and Ehrman, 3:178. 20. Ibid., 1:78. 21. “Adam quoque ante preuaricationem angelicum carnem et omne genus musicorum sciebat et uocem habebat sonantem, ut uox monochordi sonat. In prevaricatione autem illius de astutia serpentis intorsit se in medullam et in femur eius quidam uentus, qui etiam nunc in omni homine est. Et de uento illo splen hominis inpinguescit, et inepta letitia et risus atque cahinni in homine excutiuntur.” Cause et cure, ed. Moulinier, II, K 149, p. 188. For context regarding sound and laughter, see Valerie Allen, On Farting: Language and Laughter in the ­Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007). This passage is discussed again in Chapter 8. For further discussion, see Leigh-­Choate, Flynn, and Fassler, “Hearing the Heavenly Symphony,” 177–78. On what and how Adam spoke, see Joëlle Ducos, “La Langue d’Adam,” in Adam, le premier homme, ed. Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Florence: Galluzzo, 2012), 21–68. 22. Fassler, “Angels and Ideas.”

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Notes to Pages 71–73

23. See also Ducos, “La Langue d’Adam,” and Georgina González Rabassó, “Rediscovering the Secrets of Voice: Hildegard of Bingen,” Mediaevalia: Textos e estudos 32 (2013): 53–69: “according to Hildegard, ­t here is a way to restore the lost voice of Adam together with the primitive state in which the h ­ uman being was first created: the songs of praise. Restoring Adam’s lost voice also means restoring the rationalitas transmitted by that voice, and this rationality is closer to the Divinity” (62–63). 24. “­Mother Maria Nugent speaks about how the co-­foundress [of the Abbey of Regina Laudis, Bethlehem, CT], ­Mother Mary Aline, would feel that when she went into her stall, with her book in her hand, ready to chant the liturgy, she could ‘see the w ­ hole world.’ ” See my “Filming the Nuns of Regina Laudis: Old and New Evidence for Monastic Studies,” Religion Compass 4 (2010): 340–52. For an overview of the monastic day, hour by hour, see Alison  I. Beach, “Living and Working in a Twelfth-­Century ­Women’s Monastic Community,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 37–51. 25. The Berlin Fragment is described in the Introduction. For the language of Adam, see Dronke, “The Four Ele­ments,” 913, where he argues tentatively that the word “Teutonic” for the language Adam and Eve spoke was a ­mistake and the word should be “tectonic” (i.e., lingua tectonica): “Hildegard i­magined a completely harmonious language, a ‘designer language.’ ” Referencing Hildegard’s letter to the prelates of Mainz (see note 20), Dronke says: “If Hildegard wrote of a ‘tectonic’ language, she must have ­imagined a structured one, unified in form and not full of grammatical heterogeneities, such as Latin has. In her late letter about ­music she pictured Adam before the fall as ‘able to sing like an angel,’ as having ‘no ­little kinship with the angels’ praises of God.’ Thus the language in which the first parents sang the divine praises w ­ ill have had a particularly beautiful form.” Hildegard’s own compositions are designed with a heavenly aesthetic in mind. 26. Engelberg 103, discussed in the Introduction. 27. Anna Silvas, ed., Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), “The Life of Jutta,” 65–84, at 69. This En­g lish translation is based, with some changes, on the edition made by Franz Staab: Reform und Reformgruppen im Erzbistum Mainz: Vom “Libellus de Willigisi consuetudinibus” zur “Vita domnae Juttae inclusae,” appendix II, in Quellen und Abhandlungen zur mittelrheinischen Kirchengeschichte, vol. 68: Reformidee und Reformpolitik im spätsalisch-­frühstaufischen Reich, ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Mainz: Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 1992). For her critique of Staab’s edition and a discussion of her translation and the importance of the work, see Silvas, Jutta and Hildegard, 46–63. 28. Se­lections from the Chronicle of the Disibodenberg are found in Silvas, Jutta and Hildegard; this quotation is from pp. 23–24. The manuscript containing the chronicle is Frankfurt am Main, Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, MS Barth. 104, from the early ­fourteenth ­century. The Annales Sancti Disibodi ­were edited by G. W. Waitz in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum 17 (Hannover, 1861; repr. Stuttgart: Anton Hierseman, 1963), 4–30. 29. It is fairly common to find that visions relate to modes of thought that take place within the liturgy. See Jeffrey Hamburger, “Mysticism and Visuality,” with many references to his own and to other writers on this topic, in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Amy Hollywood and Patricia Z. Beckman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 277–93, and for discussion of Benedictine modes of prayer in par­tic­u ­lar, see Amy Hollywood, “Song, Experience, and the Book in Benedictine Monasticism,” in the same volume, pp. 59–79. The numerous writings of Mary Carruthers are basic to the study of the art of memory in the Latin ­Middle Ages, and an introduction to liturgical movement as it formed individual and communal understanding is found in her “Rhetorical Ductus, or, Moving Through a Composition,” in Acting on the Past: Historical Per­for­mance Across the Disciplines, ed. Mark Franko and Annette Richards (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 99–117. Hildegard’s con­temporary Elizabeth of Schönau’s set of visions provides an excellent example of the fusion of monastic prayer in Office and Mass liturgies with the visionary.



Notes to Pages 73–77

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30. Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash Between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80 (2005): 1–43. 31. “Et dixi et scripsi haec non secundum adinuentionem cordis mei aut ullius hominis, sed ut ea in caelestibus uidi, audivi et percepi per secreta mysteria Dei. Et iterum audiui uocem de caelo mihi dicentem: ‘Clama ergo et scribe sic.’ ” Scivias I, Protestificatio, 6, 94–98; 61. 32. Some ideas in this chapter w ­ ere first worked out in my essay “History and Practice: The Opening of Scivias and Its Liturgical Framework,” in Something Fearful: Medievalist Scholars on the Religious Turn in Literary Criticism, a special issue of Religion and Lit­er­a­ture, ed. Kathryn Kerby-­ Fulton and Jonathan Juilfs (2010): 211–27. 33. In a paper presented at the Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2001, Iris Mueller provided an analy­sis of the script of Engelberg 103 and compared it to known examples from the Disibodenberg and the Rupertsberg, demonstrating the marked differences. The manuscript is online, with notes by William Flynn, at https://­w ww​.­e​-­codices​.­unifr​.­ch​/­en​/ ­bke​/­0103​/ ­bindingA. 34. Leigh-­Choate, Flynn, and Fassler, “Hildegard as Musical Hagiographer,” 195–99. 35. Felix Heinzer, Klosterreform und mittelalterliche Buchkultur im deutschen Südwesten (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 393–94 and his “Der Hirsauer ‘Liber Ordinarius,’ ” 343–44 (where Engelberg 103 is Hesbert’s manuscript 674). On Hirsau-­influenced monasticism in and around Mainz, see Staab, Reform und Reformgruppen im Erzbistum Mainz, 119–87, especially 147–66. 36. See Chapter 7 for study of the Ordo virtutum in the context of the Edifice of Salvation. 37. On the significant number of manuscripts of the Imago mundi, see Flint, “Honorius Augustodunensis’ Imago Mundi.” Flint lists forty-­t wo early manuscripts (mostly twelfth ­century), some of which are complete and some fragments. 38. The text ­here is as edited and translated by Calvin Bower in The Liber Ymnorum of Notker Balbulus (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2016) 1.257–59 (Latin and m ­ usic) (2:169 (En­g lish). (I followed the versification of the Latin edition of the text.) Bower transcribed the text from Munich, Clm 9921, fol. 44r; however, it was found in other sources east of the Rhine as well. 39. See Kruckenberg, “Zur Rekonstruktion des Hirsauer Sequentiars.” “Vox exultationis” appears in Hirsau sources with sequences cata­logued in this article. 40. See Chapter 8 for discussion of the responsories of All Saints and of the chants Hildegard composed for the same categories of saints, including the angels. 41. For Barbara Newman’s commentary on no. 58, “O pater omnium,” see her edition of the lyr­ ics in Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 306–7. 42. This sequence is cata­logued in Calvin Bower’s “Clavis Sequentiarum,” found online at CANTUS and, in addition to Bower’s edition cited above, can be found in AH 53: no. 112, pp. 196–99. 43. Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 391, the second volume of the Hartker antiphoner, copied at Sankt Gallen in the last years of the tenth c­ entury, contains a full feast for All Saints, fols. 137r– 141r. As can be seen, the first eight responsories are borrowed from other feasts and oftentimes are the same as found in Engelberg 103. 44. Apoc. 7: 9–10: “­A fter this I saw a ­great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and p ­ eoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands: And they cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.” 45. Background to this theme, impor­tant in his commentary on the Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux, is found in Tim Opgenhaffen, “Saint Aldegund, First Mystic of the Low Countries: The Bride and Bridegroom in the Merovingian Era,” Revue d’Histoire écclésiastique 108 (2013): 659–92. 46. Scivias II.vi.76; 278: “A virgin betrothed to my Son ­w ill receive Him as Bridegroom, for she has shut her body away from the physical husband; and in her Bridegroom she has the priesthood and all the ministry of My altar, and with Him possesses all its riches.”

294

Notes to Pages 78–86

47. See Appendix 3. 48. For a brief introduction to the Divine Office (Hours of Prayer) in the Latin M ­ iddle Ages, see my ­Music in the Medieval West (2014), especially the “Primer,” which constitutes the final section of the book. For a deep investigation concerning the formation and structure of the Office, see Jesse Billett, The Divine Office in Anglo-­Saxon E ­ ngland, 597–­c. 1000, Henry Bradshaw Society, Subsidia 7 (London: Boydell Press, for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 2014). 49. The texts of ­t hese antiphons in En­g lish and in Latin are provided in Appendix 3. 50. See Susan Rankin, “Terribilis est locus iste: The Pantheon in 609,” in Rhe­toric Beyond Words, ed. Mary Carruthers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 281–310. In Engelberg 103 the sermon “Legimus” has been attributed to Rabanus Maurus (see fol. 67r). 51. See Appendix 3. 52. The usual meaning assigned to the “golden number” in the ­Middle Ages was the number that was used to correct the lunar cycles of calendars, mathematical work necessary for the calculation of the date of Easter. For an evaluation of an a­ ctual medieval calendar in regard to this system and changes taking place within it over time, see C. Philipp E. Nothaft, “The Astronomical Data in the Très Riches Heures and Their Fourteenth-­Century Source,” Journal of the History of Astronomy 46 (2015): 113–29. Hildegard’s use of the term is completely dif­fer­ent. 53. For the entire text, see Appendix 3 and discussion of the responsories of All Saints in Chapter 8. 54. See discussion of the antiphon and its text above. 55. Saint Benedict, Abbot of Monte Cassino, RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and En­glish with Notes, trans. Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981), 7.113–14, p.195. 56. “. . . ​quoniam timor Domini in deuotione humilitatis beatitudinem paupertatis spiritus fortiter tenet, quae non iactantiam nec elationem cordis appetit, sed simplicitatem et sobrietatem mentis diligit, non sibi sed Deo . . . ​opera sua . . .” Scivias I.i.3, 80–84; 9; 68. 57. RB 1980, 7.7, p. 193. 58. Scivias I.i.6; 69. 59. The critical edition of the text of the Ordo virtutum is by Peter Dronke in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 505–21. The m ­ usic of the play has been edited by Vincent Corrigan, Ordo virtutum: A Comparative Edition. Peter Dronke translated the Ordo virtutum into En­g lish in his Nine Medieval Latin Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 and 2008.), 160–81. 60. On Hildegard’s use of allegory, see especially Dronke, “The Allegorical World-­Picture.” Dronke revisits Hans Liebeschütz, Das allegorische Weltbild der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1930). My own work, though highly sympathetic to Dronke’s analy­sis, turns frequently to the liturgy to understand Hildegard’s thought world, especially h ­ ere and again in Chapters 5, 7, and 8. 61. Rupert’s vita has been edited by Christopher P. Evans, Vita sancti Ruperti confessoris, in Hildegardis Bingensis Opera minora II, 91–108, and translated into En­g lish in Hildegard of Bingen, Two Hagiographies: Vita sancti Rupperti confessoris. Vita sancti Dysibodi episcopi, trans. Hugh Feiss and Christopher P. Evans (Paris: Peeters, 2010). 62. An early layer of chants in this style was given the name nova cantica by Wulf Arlt. See, for example, his “Nova cantica: Grundsätzliches und Spezielles zur Interpretation musikalischer Texte des Mittelalters,” Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 10 (1986): 13–62. An overview of this early layer with bibliography is found in Jeremy Llewellyn, “Nova Cantica,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval M ­ usic, ed. Mark Everist and Thomas Forrest Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1:147–75. An overview of the broader phenomenon is found in Susan Boynton and Margot Fassler, “The Language, Form, and Per­for­mance of Monophonic Liturgical Chants,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Lit­er­a­ture, ed. Ralph Hexter and David Townsend (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 376–400.



Notes to Pages 86–93

295

63. On the late sequence in the twelfth c­ entury, with bibliography, see my Gothic Song, and my “­Women and Their Sequences: An Overview and a Case Study,” Speculum 94 (2019): 625–73. 64. See Jennifer Bain, “Hildegard of Bingen, ‘O Jerusalem aurea civitas’ (ca. 1150–1170),” in Analytical Essays on ­Music by ­Women Composers: Secular and Sacred ­Music to 1900, ed. Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 11–46. 65. Jennifer Bain’s study of intertextual references in Hildegard’s m ­ usic provides an introduction to one way of working, across other chants in the liturgical repertory. Just as impor­tant are the constant cross-­references within each piece, mini-­exercises in binding one line or phrase and its texts to one or more ­others within in a given piece. See Jennifer Bain, “­Music, Liturgy, and Intertextuality in Hildegard of Bingen’s Chant Repertory,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 209–34. 66. My Gothic Song contains a chapter on the ways in which sequences written by the Victorines and the ­music used for them exemplified their ideals and allowed for their proclamation within the liturgy (290–320). See also my “The Victorines and the Medieval Liturgy,” in A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, ed. Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 389–421, for discussion of sequences and hymns for the patron St. Victor. The Victorines wrote two sequences for their patron, one for his feast day and one for the feast celebrating the reception of his relics. 67. For exploration of the par­t ic­u ­lar interest given to sequences as a genre by medieval female communities, see my “­Women and Their Sequences.” The essay contains a short section on Hildegard’s sequences, as does my essay “The Cosmos and the Altar in Hildegard’s Scivias and Select Sequence Texts.” 68. Addressing the virtue Chastity as Virginitas, the virtues in the OV employ flower imagery as representing her unbesmirched state: “The flower in the meadow falls in the wind, the rain splashes it, but you, Virginitas, remain in the symphonies of heavenly habitants: you are the tender flower that ­w ill never grow dry.” Trans. Dronke in Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, lines 109–11, p. 169. The dry flower is the w ­ hole flower; the fallen flower has been splashed, an illusion to copulation. H ­ ere too the chaste person is seen in the symphonic choirs of the heavenly hosts. 69. Virtues (addressing Patience): “You that stay firm in the rocky cavern, you are the glorious warrior who endures all.” Humility (addressing all the virtues): “­Daughters of Israel, God raised you from beneath the tree. So now remember how it was planted. Therefore rejoice, d ­ aughters of Zion.” 70. “Vnde etiam, ut audis, omnes isti qui cum suspiriis suis pro caelesti amore integritatem suam conseruauerunt, in caelesti habitatione ‘filiae Sion’ dicuntur: quia Filium meum uirginitatis florem in uirginitatis amore imitati sumt. Ideoque et cum eis sunt expirationes sonorem spirituum et germina cunctorum sonituum ac uolantia ornamenta prosperarum mentium et aurea uisio fulgentium lapidum ac gemmarum. Quomodo? Quia hoc habent de Filio Dei quod de throno sonus exit, cui omnis chorus uirginum in maximo desiderio concinit, uidelicet nouum canticum symphonizando, ut Iohannis dilectus uirgo testatur dicens.” Scivias II.v.7, 366–65, 182; 206.

Chapter 4 1. See Chapter 3 for further study of this passage. 2. For the entire text in Latin, see Appendix 3. 3. An introduction to this idea in early Christian art is Robin M. Jensen, “The Economy of the Trinity at the Creation of Adam and Eve,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 7 (1999): 527–46. 4. Cause et cure, trans. Madigan, 2; “Sic paternitas est: quomodo circulus rote paternitas est, plenitudo rote deitas est. In ipsa et ex ipsa sunt omnia, et preter eam creator non est.” Cause et cure, I.K2, ed. Moulinier, 21. 5. For more images with this theme, see Adelheid Heimann, “Trinitas Creator Mundi,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2 (1938): 42–52.

296

Notes to Pages 93–97

6. See Robert E. Kaske, “The Character ‘Figura’ in Le Mystère d’Adam,” in Medieval Studies in Honor of Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., ed. John Mahoney and John Esten Keller (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 103–10. 7. For discussion, see Saurma-­Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im “Liber scivias,” 93–95. The wheel b ­ ehind the figure represents the cosmos, changing throughout each “day” of the hexameron. In this image (fol. 52r) illustrating Day 4, the wheel contains the sun, the moon, and the stars, as created by the log­ os. The manuscript is digitized and online: fol. https://­daten​.­digitale​-­sammlungen​.­de​/­0004​ /­bsb00046506​/­images​/­index​.­html​?­fip ​=­193​.­174​.­98​.­30&id​=­00046506&seite ​=­113, fol. 52r. 8. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, no. 40r, trans. Baird and Ehrman, I:112. 9. New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 404; digitized at https://­brbl​-­d l​.­library​.­yale​ .­edu​/­v ufind​/­Record​/­3432521. 10. The artist’s playfulness is emphasized in Barbara Newman, “Contemplating the Trinity: Text, Image, and the Origins of the Rothschild Canticles,” Gesta 52 (2013): 133–59. 11. Jeffrey Hamburger, The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland Circa 1300 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 162. 12. Hexameral action is that taking place over the six days of Creation, as described in Genesis 1. The idea of Creation outside of time in the creator’s mind is stated in Hildegard’s LDO: “All ­t hings indeed that God worked, he held in his foreknowledge before the beginning of time. For in the pure and holy divinity, all ­t hings vis­i­ble and invisible appeared without movement and outside of time, before the ages . . . ​For when God said, ‘Let ­there be!’ immediately they ­were clothed with form.” LDO I.i.6 (trans. Campbell, 38). 13. “O Verbum Patris, tu lumen prime aurore in circulo rote es, omnia in diuina ui operans. O tu prescientia Dei, omnia opera tua preuidisti, sicut uoluisti, ita quod in medio potencie tue latuit quod omnia presciuisti, et operatus es quasi in similitudine rote cuncta circueuntis, que inicium non accepit nec in fine prostrata est.” All En­g lish translations are taken from Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 2nd ed., here at p. 259. Latin texts are also as found in the critical edition of the Symphonia, ed. Newman, in Opera minora, 335–477. Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 2nd ed., 258–59; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 473. 14. See Chapter 8 for further discussion of this concept. 15. Readers who would like a ­simple overview of concepts such as “mode,” “final,” and “reciting tone” are encouraged to consult “A Medieval ­Music Primer” in my ­Music in the Medieval West (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), A1–­A 32 and the glossary, A33–­A42; this material is also found in the Anthology, A1–­A 32, but without the glossary. The Primer also includes a basic plan for the medieval Mass and Office. 16. Symphonia, ed. Newman, 142; 406. For the Latin, see Example 4.1. 17. The four maneriae are: Maneria 1 Protus: on D; Modes 1 and 2 Maneria 2 Deuterus: on E; Modes 3 and 4 Maneria 3 Tritus: on F, Modes 5 and 6 Maneria 4 Tetrardus, on G, Modes 7 and 8 Each maneria includes both the higher and lower of the paired scales that share a common final. Hildegard usually thinks in maneriae, rather than in modes, and delights in employing a wide range of pitches. It is not pos­si­ble to know if Hildegard knew the term “maneria,” which was first known to be used in Cistercian theoretical circles in the mid-­t welfth ­century. She certainly thought as if she understood the concept, using paired scales of higher and lower registers throughout her composi-



Notes to Pages 99–103

297

tions. The term’s first known use was by the Cistercian theorist Guido of Eu. See Claire Maître and Georges Duby, eds., La Réforme cistercienne du plain-­chant: Étude d’un traité théorique (Brecht, Belgium: Abdij Nazareth, 1995). 18. For a discussion of this feature of Hildegard’s ­music, references to bibliography on the subject, and a situating of her sonic landscape within the time and place where she lived, see Jennifer Bain, “Hildegard, Hermannus, and Late Chant Style,” Journal of ­Music Theory 52 (2008): 123–49. 19. It is for this reason that we used phrases from this chant at the opening of our digital model, as the dark, inchoate threads of m ­ atter begin to coalesce to form the cosmos. 20. “In uerbo sonus, uirtus et flatus est. Sed sonum habet ut audiatur, uirtutem ut intellegatur, flatum ut compleatur. In sono autem nota Patrem qui inenarrabili potestate omnia propalat; in uirtute Filium qui mirabiliter ex Patre genitus est; in flatu uero Spiritum sanctum qui suauiter ardet in ipsis. Vbi uero sonus non auditur, ibi nec uirtus operatur nec flatus eleuatur, unde et nec ibi uerbum intellegitur; quia etiam Pater, Filius et Spiritus sanctus non sunt a se diuisi, sed suum opus unanimiter operantur.” Scivias II.ii.7, 156–64, 129; 164. For further discussion of “voice,” see González Rabassó, “Rediscovering the Secrets of Voice.” For the standard grammarian’s view, see Donatus, Ars maior I.i, in Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical: Etude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe–­I Xe siècle) et édition critique, ed. Louis Holtz (Paris: CNRS, 1981), 603. “Voice” is a much-­ studied subject among ­music scholars at pre­sent: see, for example, Martha Feldman, “Why Voice Now?” Journal of the American Musicological Society 68 (2015): 653–85. 21. “Et ego homo non calens in forma fortium leonum nec docta expiratione illorum, sed manens in mollitie fragilis costae imbuta mystico spiramine, uidi quasi lucidissimum ignem incomprehensibilem, inexstinguibilem, totum uiuentem, totumque uitam exsistentem, in se autem flammam aerii coloris habentem, quae leni flatu ardenter flagrabat et quae eidem lucido igni ita inseparabiliter inerat ut in homine uiscera sunt. Et uidi quod eadem flamma fulminans incanduit. Et ecce obscurus aer et rotundus multaeque magnitudinis repente exortus est, super quem ipsa flamma quosdam ictus dedit, toties ab eo scintillam educens, donec idem aer ad perfectum perductus est, ita caelum et terra resplendens plena institutione.” Scivias II.i.preface, 33–47, 110; 149. 22. “. . . ​quoniam excellens uniuersam creaturam supernum Verbum, in creatione creaturarum seruitutem tenentium uirtutem fortitudinis suae ostendens, ab eodem instrumento diuersas species creaturarum lucentes in mirabili ortu suscitationis ipsarum eduxit, ut faber formas suas ex aere competenter facit, usque dum eaedem creaturae in pulchritudine plenitudinis suae effulserunt, sursum et deorsum decorem et stabilimentum perfectae institutionis habentes, quia superiora resplenduerunt ab inferioribus et inferiora a superioribus.” Scivias II.i.6, 201–10, 115; 152. 23. Scivias II.i.6, 192–94, 115; 152. 24. Cohen-­Mushlin, A Medieval Scriptorium, 2:128. 25. The manuscript has been digitized and is available online: http://­w ww​.­bl​.­u k ​/­manuscripts​ /­FullDisplay​.­aspx​?­ref​=­Harley​_ ­MS​_ ­2803. 26. See Cohen-­Mushlin, A Medieval Scriptorium, vol. 1, figure 354. 27. Johannes Zahlten, Creatio mundi: Darstellungen der sechs Schöpfungstage und naturwissenschaftliches Weltbild im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Klett-­Cotta, 1979); Rudolph, “In the Beginning”; Adelheid Heimann, “The Six Days of Creation in a Twelfth C ­ entury Manuscript,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1938): 269–75. 28. This sumptuous codex is digitized and online at http://­diglib​.­hab​.­de​/­​?­db​=­mss&list​=­ms&id​=1­ 05​ -­noviss​-­2f. For the Creation page, see http://­diglib​.­hab​.­de​/­mss​/­105​-­noviss​-­2f​/­start​.­htm​?­image ​=­172r. 29. In his study of an illuminated chapter book from the Abbey of Zwiefalten, Felix Heinzer speaks of this quality of complex display for the sake of teaching monastic ideals, especially as found in the cultural sphere of influence created by the reforms of Hirsau. Hildegard was certainly in this sphere. Such works of art had as their goal: “la promotion du renouveau spirituel dont traitent les

298

Notes to Pages 103–112

textes des manuscrits, cette option fondamentale paraît trouver sa véritable expression dans les miniatures qui, comme la nôtre, réduisent les moyens techniques pour réaliser des programmes complexes et ‘intellectuels,’ souvent assortis d’un apparat assez impor­tant de phylactères, inscriptions, souscriptions, ­etc.” Heinzer, “ ‘Scalam ad coelos,’ ” 336. 30. “. . . ​hoc est quod Deus in loco germinandi magnum splendorum rutilantis luminis plantauit, in illum Verbum suum pleno desiderio mittens, non tamen ab ipso diuisum, sed dedit illud fructuosum fructum atque ipsum eduxit magnum fontem, . . .” Scivias II.i.11, 284–88, 118; 154. 31. See also Chapter 8 for an overview of the fourteen Scivias chants. 32. This is a quotation from my “Angels and Ideas,” 207. The musical analy­sis presented ­here expands somewhat upon that found in my e­ arlier essay, connecting the work more tightly to the themes of creation and cosmos. 33. For the Latin, see Ex. 4.2. Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 114; 385. This analy­sis of the ­music is adapted from my “Angels and Ideas.” 34. Marcel Pérès, dir., Ensemble Organum, Hildegard von Bingen: Laudes de Sainte Ursule [CD], En­g lish notes, trans. D. Yeld (Harmonia Mundi HMC 901626, Arles 1997), 10. See also González Rabassó, “Rediscovering the Secrets of Voice,” 57–58. For a complete discography, see the entry for Jerome F. Weber in the bibliography. 35. The “emphasis on final, fifth, and octave is a well-­documented and audible feature of the ­music of Hildegard, described by dozens of ­people.” Bain, “Hildegard, Hermannus, and Late Chant Style,” 128. A number of m ­ usic theorists in southern Germany w ­ ere part of the circle of thinkers and composers who wrote in this tradition in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. See Thomas J. H. McCarthy, ­Music, Scholasticism and Reform: Salian Germany, 1024–1125 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). 36. Pitches ­were not absolute in the ­Middle Ages, although of course the relative distances between them in the modes employed w ­ ere. 37. This polarity is also discussed at length in my “Allegorical Architecture in Scivias: Hildegard’s Setting for the Ordo Virtutum,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 67 (2014): 317–78; in Roswitha Dabke, “The Hidden Scheme of the Virtues in Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum,” Parergon 23 (2006): 11–46; and in Michael C. Gardiner, Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum: A Musical and Metaphysical Analy­sis (London: Routledge, 2019). Gardiner’s detailed study appeared just as my own studies w ­ ere essentially completed, and it has not been pos­si­ble for me to evaluate his arguments thoroughly for incorporation into this book. In general, however, we approach Hildegard’s play and her musical settings in dif­fer­ent ways, he primarily as a ­music theorist, and I as a musicologist, theologian, and interdisciplinarian. Ultimately the approaches may prove to be complementary. 38. “In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram. Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi: et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas. Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux. Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona: et divisit lucem a tenebris. Appellavitque lucem Diem, et tenebras Noctem: factumque est vespere et mane, dies unus.” 39. See Dominique Poirel, “Physique et théologie: Une querelle entre Guillaume de Conches et ­Hugues de Saint-­Victor à propos du chaos originel,” in Guillaume de Conches: Philosophie et science au XIIe siècle, ed. Barbara Obrist and Irene Caiazzo, Micrologus’ Library 42 (Florence: Galluzzo, 2011), 289–328. 40. Hugh of St.-­Victor, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, I.i.2 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Acad­emy of Amer­i­ca, 1951), 9. 41. From Hildegard of Bingen, Holistic Healing, actually Cause et cure, trans. Madigan, 1. 42. “Deinde vidi uelut maximam multitudinem uiuentium lampadarum multam claritatem habentium, quae igneum fulgorem accipientes ita serenissimem splendorem adeptae sunt.” Scivias I.ii. preface, 51–55, 13; 73.



Notes to Pages 112–116

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43. Scivias I.ii.preface, 73–74, 14; 73. 44. “. . . ​quoniam cum a Deo creati sunt, non superbam elationem arripuerunt, sed in diuino amore fortiter perstiterunt.” Scivias I.ii.preface, 82–84, 14; 73. 45. “In casu diaboli in illis angelicis spiritibus qui cum Deo in rectitudine perseuerauerunt maxima laus exorta est, . . .” Scivias I.ii.1, 89–91, 14; 73. 46. See discussion below for the text and m ­ usic of this chant. 47. Scivias I.ii.2, 108, 15; 74. When the snake deceived Eve in the Garden, it was through appeal to gaining powers of knowledge that God reserved for himself. Genesis 3:4–5: “And the serpent said to the w ­ oman: No, you ­shall not die the death. For God doth know that in what day soever you ­shall eat thereof, your eyes s­ hall be opened: and you s­ hall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.” 48. “Et cum in superbiam elatus illud perficere uellet quod cogitauerat, zelus Domini se extendens in ignea nigredine illum cum omni comitatu suo deiecit, . . .” Scivias I.ii.2, 110–12, 15; 74. 49. Anselm of Canterbury, Three Philosophical Dialogues, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), On the Fall of the Dev­il, 52–100, cap. 25 at 96. 50. See Augustine, City of God, XXII.1. Discussion of this idea is found in David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the M ­ iddle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 16–27; and Vojtech Novotny, Cur Homo?: A History of the Thesis Concerning Man as Replacement for Fallen Angels (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2014). 51. Gregory the ­Great, Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson, 2nd ed. (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008). 52. “ita et homo in universitate habet suum proprium locum, sicut et angelus suum proprium. Igitur homo non est pro angelo, sed pro seipso creatus, alioquin majoris dignitatis vermis esset, qui proprium haberet, quam homo, qui proprio loco careret; et alterius locum occuparet sicque dissonantia in universitate fieret. Sed et Deus improvidus esset, qui aliquid in loco alterius poneret. Et quia hoc veritati repugnat vera ratio probat: si omnes angeli in coelo permansissent, homo in coelo proprium locum pleniter habuisset.” Libellus duodecim quaestionum, PL 172: 1179D–1180B. For En­ glish translation and further discussion, see Yingst, “Towers in the Mud,” 133. 53. “Tunc praeuidit Deus quia quod in eodem perdito agmine cecidit fortius restaurandum esset in alio. Quomodo? Quia creauit hominem de limo terrae uiuentem in anima et corpore, ut ad gloriam illam pertingeret, de qua praeuaricator diabolus cum suis imitatoribus eiectus est; . . . ​quatenus in hoc beatitudinis culmine adornaret laudem eorundem supernorum spirituum qui assidua deuotione sunt laudantes Deum, atque ut in eadem beatitudine sua hoc adimpleret quod perditus angelus in praesumptione sua ruens euacuauit.” Scivias III.ii.19, 537–41, 547–51, 364; 334–35. 54. See Newman, ­Sister of Wisdom, 100–107. At 106–7, Newman says: “If the shining cloud signifies Eve, overshadowing is a natu­ral meta­phor for her fall, making it a negative type or diabolic parody of the Virgin’s conception. . . . ​Mary would one day be overshadowed by the bright powers of God.” 55. “Et ecce lacus multae latitudinis et profunditatis apparuit, os uelut os putei habens et igneum fumum cum multo foetore emittens, de quo etiam taeterrima nebula se extendens quasi uenam uisum deceptibilem habentem tetigit, et in quadam clara regione candidam nubem quae de quadam pulchra forma hominis plurimas plurimasque stellas in se continens exierat per eam afflauit ac illam eandemque formam hominis de eadem regione ita eiecit. Quo facto lucidissimus splendor eandem regionem circumdedit, et ita omnia elementa mundi, quae prius in magna quiete constiterant, in maximam inquietudinem uersa horribiles terrores ostenderunt. Et iterum audiui illum qui mihi prius locutus fuerat dicentem.” Scivias I.ii.preface, 55–70, 13; 73. 56. Dronke says of Hildegard’s method of explanation: “Alongside the examples where an allegorical meaning is simply revealed, we have the more dramatic device by which images gradually reveal themselves, by their looks and bearing and language, challenging us to recognize them and infer hidden meanings (even if ­t hese are also confirmed explic­itly at a ­later stage)” (“The Allegorical

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Notes to Pages 116–126

World-­Picture,” 3). See also Chapter 7 for further discussion of this idea, especially as it relates to the Ordo virtutum. 57. “Vidi etiam tunc de secreto eisudem sedentis in throno stellam magnam multi splendoris ac decoris prodire, et cum ea plurimam multitudinem candentium scintillarum quae cum eadem stella omnes confluentes ad austrum inspiciebant ipsum sedentem in throno quasi alienum, seque ab eo auertentes magis inhiabant ad aquilonem quam eum inspicere uellent. Sed statim in ipsa auersione inspectionis suae omnes exstinctae sunt, sic uersae in nigredinem carbonum. Et ecce uentus turbinis ortus est ab ipsis qui eas mox ab austro retro eundem sedentem in throno proiecit ad aquilonem praecipitatas in abyssum, ita ut earun amplius nullam uidere ualerem. Splendorum autem illum magnum qui eis abstractus est uidi subito in earum exstinctione reuerti ad ipsum sedentem in throno.” Scivias III.i.preface, 61–77, 328–29; 309. 58. She restates this idea in LDO I.i.3: “[God] held them in such loving affection that he destined them for that place from which the falling angel was cast out, and he ordained them for the glory and honor that that angel in his blessedness had lost” (trans. Campbell, 36). 59. The two chants in praise of angels are numbers 3 and 4 in the set of 14. For a full listing of ­t hese chants and further discussion, see Chapter 8. 60. For further discussion, see Leigh-­Choate, Flynn, and Fassler, “Hearing the Heavenly Symphony,” 176–84, and William T. Flynn, “Singing with the Angels: Hildegard of Bingen’s Repre­sen­ta­ tions of Celestial M ­ usic,” in Conversations with Angels: Essays T ­ owards a History of Spiritual Communication, 1100–1700, ed. Joad Raymond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 203–29. 61. Newman, Symphonia, 154–55; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 413–14. This antiphon plays a major role in our digital model of the cosmos, especially in our depiction of the heavenly hosts of the illuminated Scivias I.vi, and on the fall of Satan from Scivias III.i. 62. See http://­ica​.­t hemorgan​.­org​/­manuscript​/­page​/­1​/­158530. 63. New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS 791, fol. 4v: http://­ica​.­t hemorgan​.­org​ /­manuscript​/­page​/­5​/­145047. See William Noel and Daniel Weiss, eds., The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible (London: Third Millennium Publishing, 2003), and Sydney C. Cockerell, Old Testament Miniatures: A Medieval Picture Book with 283 Paintings from the Creation to the Story of David (New York: George Braziller, [1969]). 64. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Salem  X.16 is digitized and online; the folio described h ­ ere is at http://­digi​.­ub​.­uni​-­heidelberg​.­de​/­diglit​/­salX16​/­0005​/­image. 65. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. hist. 2o fol. 415, fol. 17r: http://­digital​ .­w lb​-­s tuttgart​.­d e​/­s ammlungen​/­s ammlungsliste​/­werksansicht​/­​?­no​_­c ache ​=­1&tx ​_­d lf%5Bid%5D​ =­5438&tx ​_­d lf%5Bpage%5D​=3­ 9&tx​_ ­d lf%5Bdouble%5D​=­0&cHash​=­682d746d12f37b110b391dbf350 77119. Jeffrey Hamburger says of the artworks in this manuscript: “At Zwiefalten, as at other reform monasteries in southern Germany, the decision to employ drawing, rather than full-­bodied illumination in color and gold, itself represents humility”; Diagramming Devotion: Berthold of Nuremberg’s Transformation of Hrabanus Maurus’s Poems in Praise of the Cross (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 89. 66. On the sources for the four rivers in the Hebrew Bible, see Yehuda T. Radday, “The Four Rivers of Paradise,” Hebrew Studies 23 (1982): 23–31. For the cultural mapping of the elemental ancient rivers, see Rila Mukherjee, “Mountains of the Moon, Lakes in the Sun, and Sinus Gangeticus,” in Knowledge in Translation: Global Patterns of Scientific Exchange, 1000–1800 CE, ed. Patrick Manning and Abigail Owen, introduction by Charles Burnett (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), 58–74. 67. The Rupertsberg painting of Satan is discussed in Chapter 5.



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Chapter 5 1. Elizabeth Keen, “Shifting Horizons: The Medieval Compilation of Knowledge as Mirror of a Changing World,” in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Re­nais­sance, ed. Jason König and Greg Wolff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 277–300. 2. Ibid., 284. 3. Yingst, “Towers in the Mud,” 197: “Rendering complex theology into concrete, visual terms is, to a ­great degree, simply what Honorius’s proj­ect is, what all of his works strive to accomplish. ­These images are the practical manifestations of the quest for the vision of God that lies at the heart of the Christian life he espouses, and the popu­lar appeal of his efforts was no doubt in a large part b ­ ecause of his deft h ­ andling of images. His works are useful and valuable precisely ­because they made it pos­ si­ble to ‘see’ the complexities of theology through his vivid descriptions.” 4. The copiously illuminated Liber floridus by Lambert of St. Omer (discussed below) is an encyclopedia rather than a theological treatise. It does not contain materials for liturgical per­for­mance. 5. “Post haec uidi maximum instrumentum rotundum et umbrosum secundum similitudinem oui, superius artum et in medio amplum ac inferius constrictum, in cuius exteriori parte per circuitum lucidus ignis fuit, quasi pellem umbrosam sub se habens. Et in igne isto erat globus rutilantis ignis tantaeque magnitudinis quod idem instrumentum totum ab eo illustrabatur, super se tres faculas sursum ordinate positas habens quae suo igne eundem globum ne laberetur continebant.” Scivias I.iii. preface, 41–51, 40; 93. 6. LDO I.ii.3 (trans. Campbell, 55). 7. Peter Dronke, “Fables of the Cosmic Egg,” in Fa­bula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 119–43. See Appendix A: “Latin and Vernacular Allusions to the Cosmic Egg,” 154–66. 8. Rabanus Maurus did not use the concept of the egg for the cosmos, and yet his writings on the natu­ral world w ­ ere widely read and the tradition of diagrams and charts accompanying them is impor­tant: Diane O. Le Berrurier, The Pictorial Sources of Mythological and Scientific Illustrations in Hrabanus Maurus’ De rerum naturis (New York: Garland, 1978). 9. Milo, according to Dronke, flourished ca. 1150. His unpublished cosmographical poem (about 400 hexameters) “Liber de mundi philosophia” is found in the twelfth-­century Mariological miscellany London, British Library, Add. MS 35112, fols. 112r–115v (it begins “Mens celer armatur” and ends “si versum legeris olim”). It is followed in this collection by a short poem on the twelve winds. 10. See Wanda Cizewski, “A Theological Feast: The Commentary by Rupert of Deutz on Trinity Sunday,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 55 (1988): 41–52, and Rupert of Deutz, De divinis, ed. Hrabanus Haacke, CCCM 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), 6.1 (p. 187). For a discussion of a series of hymns in the Latin rite that worked through the hexameron day by day, see Peter Jeffery, “The Six Eve­nings of Creation in the Hymns of the Roman Breviary,” in Full of Your Glory: Liturgy, Cosmos, Creation, ed. Teresa Berger (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019), 137–63. Jeffery posits that the eighth-­or ninth-­century poet of ­t hese six hymns was expanding Ambrose’s “Deus creator omnium” into a full set for Vespers for use throughout the year. 11. Dronke, Fa­bula, 97. 12. Obrist, “Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology.” 13. An overview is Jean-­Pierre Leguay, L’Air et le Vent au Moyen Âge (Rennes: University of Rennes Press, 2011). On diagrams accompanying Isidore’s work, see Barbara Obrist, “Le Diagramme Isidorien des saisons, son contenu physique et les représentations figuratives,” in Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-­Age 108/1 (1996): 95–164. 14. Obrist, “Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology,” 34–35.

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Notes to Pages 131–133

15. Honorius Augustodunensis, De imagine mundi I. liv, in Patrologia Latina 172, ed. J.-­P. Migne, 115–188 (Paris: Migne, 1895), 136A. “De hoc procreantur venti. Ventus enim est aer commotus, et agitatus. Et nihil aliud quam aeris fluctus qui in duodecim dividitur; et quisque proprium vocabulum sortitur, de quibus quatuor sunt cardinales illorum collaterales.” 16. Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92, fol. 24r. See Albert Derolez, The Autograph Manuscript of the Liber Floridus: A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of Saint-­Omer, Corpus Christianorum Autographi Medii Aevi 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998). For an exercise in dating a twelfth-­century planetary diagram, see Max E. Lippitsch and Sonja Draxler, “A Medieval Planetary Diagram in Graz University Library,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 43 (2012): 141–49. 17. Apoc. 7: “[1] ­A fter ­t hese ­t hings, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that they should not blow upon the earth, nor upon the sea, nor on any tree. [2] And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the sign of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, [3] Saying: Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we sign the servants of our God in their foreheads.” 18. ­These horned, singular windheads blow dark gusts of air, which the angels seem to be restraining. The manuscript is digitized and available online: http://­digital​.­bib​-­bvb​.­de​/­v iew​/­bvbmets​ /­v iewer​ .­0​ .­6​ .­4​ .­j sp​ ?­f older​ _ ­i d​ = ­0 &dvs ​ = ­1 563201473523~421&pid ​ = ­1 3423867&locale ​ = ­d e&usePid1​ =­t rue&usePid2​=­t rue. 19. For the biblical and patristic background to this idea, see Jacqueline Leclercq-­Marx, “Vox Dei clamat in tempestate: À propos de l’iconographie des Vents et d’un groupe d’inscriptions campanaires (IXe–­X IIIe siècles),” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale (1999): 179–87. 20. An overview of the names of the winds is found in Dale Kedwards, “Wind Diagrams in Medieval Iceland,” Quaestio Insularis 15 (2014): 92–107. The names of the winds are given in Isidore’s Etymologiae, XX. On the movement of windheads from four to twelve among Greek writers, see Obrist, “Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology,” 42. 21. The dating of the embroidery varies widely, from the mid-­eleventh to the mid-­twelfth ­century. The theological themes of the tapestry are discussed in Lily Arad, “From Creation to Salvation in the Girona Embroidery,” Miscellània litúrgica catalana 12 (2004): 59–88; Barbara Baert, “New Observations on the Genesis of Girona (1050–1100): The Iconography of the Legend of the True Cross,” Gesta 38 (1999): 115–27; and Alfons Puigarnau, “ ‘Fiat lux’: Iconology and Theology of Time in Medieval Catalonia,” in Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-­R iaño, International Medieval Research 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 427–50. It is located in the Museum of the Cathedral of Girona. It is but a fragment of the original, and now mea­sures 365 × 470 centimeters. 22. See Manuel Castiñeiras, El Tapís de la Creació (Girona: Catedral de Girona, 2011). 23. Puigarnau, “ ‘Fiat lux’ ”: “In the Creation Tapestry, neither the man nor the w ­ oman covers their nakedness since without sin t­ here is no wickedness, no disorder; but they are still within the fiat lux” (446). Puigarnau believes that the theological content of the embroidery places it in the mid-­ twelfth ­century. 24. Hildegard speaks of this balance too in LDO I.i and explains the dangers that can be found in unchecked winds: “I have established too the pillars that contain the ­whole circle of the earth—­the winds. The stronger winds have wings set below them, which are the lighter winds, and ­these uphold the stronger winds with their lightness, lest they dangerously unleash themselves” (trans. Campbell, 34). 25. Hildegard’s windheads in the LDO are completely dif­fer­ent from ­t hose found in Scivias and are discussed in far greater detail. In the ­later treatise, they become twelve animal heads, arranged in groups of three, and so still creating the kind of balance between the heads found in Scivias; they are also located in dif­fer­ent zones of the plan and treated allegorically. Dronke says, in the introduction



Notes to Pages 134–140

303

to the critical edition: “All of them blow into the wheel and onto the image, b ­ ecause together they sustain the cosmos and man, in whom all creatures lie hidden” (xliv). 26. “Sed et, ut uides, de igne illo qui idem instrumentum circumdederat flatus quidam cum suis turbinibus exiebat: qui ostendit praetendens quoniam ab omnipotente Deo totum mundum sua potestate complente uera diffamatio cum iustis sermonibus procedit, ubi ipse uiuus et uerus Deus hominibus in ueritate demonstratus est.” Scivias I.iii.8, 181–86, 44; 95–96. 27. “In eadem quoque pelle quidam tenebrosus ignis tanti horroris erat quod eum intueri non poteram, qui totam pellem illam sua fortitudine concutiebat, plenus sonituum, tempestatum et acutissimorum lapidum maiorum et minorum.” Scivias I.iii.preface, 60–65, 40; 93. 28. “Sub eodem autem aethere aquosum aerem uidebam albam pellem sub se habentem, qui se hac et illac diffundens omni instrumento illi umorem dedit. Qui dum se interdum repente congregaret, repentinam pluuiam multo fragore emisit et dum se leniter diffudit, blandam pluuiam leni motu dedit.” Scivias I.iii.preface, 84–90, 41; 93. 29. Scivias I.iii.14 (Latin, p. 47; En­g lish, p. 97). 30. Ibid. 31. For an overview of the medieval tradition, see Bruce S. Eastwood and Gerd Graßhoff, “Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Eu­rope, ca. 800–1500,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 94/3 (2004): 1–158. See further discussion in Chapter 1. 32. A diagram of planetary cycles similar to the one at the bottom of Walters 73, fol. 2v occurs in the St. John’s Computus, an En­g lish manuscript made ca. 1110 at the monastery of Thorney in Cambridgeshire; see Oxford, St. John’s College, MS 17, fol. 37v. 33. See also Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1 Gud. lat., fol. 61r, http://­ diglib​.­hab​.­de​/­mss​/­1​-­g ud​-­lat​/­start​.­htm​?­image​=­00127. 34. See Obrist, “Le Diagramme isidorien des saisons.” 35. John F. Moffitt, “Medieval Mappaemundi and Ptolemy’s Chorographia,” Gesta 32/1 (1993): 59–68. 36. Online digitized copy at https://­bvmm​.­irht​.­cnrs​.­fr​/­consult​/­consult​.­php​?­reproductionId​=7­ 114. 37. “. . . ​quoniam inter diabolicam impietatem et diuinam bonitatem magnus casus hominis apparet, per pessimam deceptionem in reprobis multas miserias damnationis, et per exoptabilem salutem in electis plurimam felicitatem redemptionis tenens, . . .” Scivias I.iii.19, 326–29, 49; 99. 38. The critical edition of the text includes a map of the cosmic egg in which all its parts are labeled. 39. “The universe is called as if to say, ‘motion everywhere,’ for it is in perpetual motion. It is ­shaped like a round ball, but it is divided into ele­ments in the likeness of an egg. The egg, indeed, is externally surrounded on all sides by the shell; the shell contains the white; the white contains the yolk; and the yolk contains the medulla. In like manner, the universe is surrounded on all sides by heaven as a shell; heaven, indeed, contains the pure aether as white; the aether contains the turbid air as yolk, and the air contains the earth as the medulla.” En­glish translation (modified) from Cizewski, “The Doctrine of Creation,” 155. “Mundus dicitur quasi undique motus, est enim in perpetuo motu. Hujus figura est in modum pilae rotunda. Sed instar ovi elementis distincta. Ovum quippe exterius testa undique ambitur, testae albumen, albumini vitellum, vitello gutta pinguedinis includitur. Sic mundus undique coelo, ut testa, circumdatur, coelo vero purus aether ut ­a lbum, aetheri turbidus aer, ut vitellum, aeri terra, ut pinguedinis gutta includitur.” De imagine mundi, PL 172, I.i, 115B. 40. The paintings accompanying the thirteenth-­century copy of LDO (Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 1942) feature a round cosmos and are very dif­fer­ent in character from the cosmic egg of Scivias, as is the cosmos diagrammed in t­hese paintings and described by Hildegard in LDO. The provenance of this manuscript is currently unknown: it apparently was not made on the Rupertsberg and was produced at least a generation ­a fter Hildegard’s death. Digitized copies of the paintings are available for viewing online at http://­w ww​.­hildegard​-­society​.­org​/­p​/­liber​-­divinorum​-­operum​.­html.

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Notes to Pages 140–144

41. “Et in igne isto erat globus rutilantis ignis tantaeque magnitudinis quod idem instrumentum totum ab eo illustrabatur, super se tres faculas sursum ordinate positas habens quae suo igne eundem globum ne laberetur continebant.” Scivias I.iii.preface, 46–51, 40; 93. 42. “. . . ​demonstrantes quod idem Filius Dei de caelo ad terras descendens, angelis in caelestibus relictis, hominibus etiam qui in anima et corpore subsistunt caelestia manifestauit, . . .” Scivias I.iii.4, 144–47, 43; 95. 43. “. . . ​ad diuina praecepta caelestium secretorum trahunt, scilicet cum ipsa eandem ecclesiam ne in uarietatem diuersorum morum se praecipitanter extendat continent, . . .” Scivias I.iii.11, 234– 37, 46; 96–97. 44. “. . . ​in quo etiam quendam globum candentis ignis plurimaeque magnitudinis uidebam, super se duas faculas sursum clare positas habentem, ipsumque globum ne modem cursus sui excederet continentes. Et in eodem aethere multae et clarae sphaerae ubique positae fuerant, in quas idem globus interdum se aliquantulum euacuans claritatem suam emisit, et ita sub praefatum rubeum igneumque globum recurrens et ab eo flammas suas restaurans, iterum illas in easdem sphaeras efflauit.” Scivias I.iii.preface, 71–81, 40–41; 93. 45. See especially Newman, ­Sister of Wisdom, chap. 5, “Bride of Christ,” 187–249, for a full explication of this theme, one that reaches into all aspects of Scivias, and other treatises as well, and takes cognizance of the artworks and the lyr­ics. 46. Scivias I.iii.12, 47; 97. 47. Barbara Obrist, “The Physical and the Spiritual Universe: ‘Infernus’ and Paradise in Medieval Cosmography and Its Visual Repre­sen­ta­tions (Seventh–­Fourteenth C ­ entury),” Studies in Iconography 36 (2015): 41–78, at 42. 48. Ibid., 50–51. Obrist also compares Honorius’s scheme to that of Hugh of St.-­Victor, who described the pains of hellfire in his On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith II.16, 5, trans. Deferrari, 439–40. 49. Obrist, “The Physical and the Spiritual Universe,” 50. On Satan, see also Darren Oldrige, The Dev­il: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Jeffery Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the M ­ iddle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). 50. For comparison to Herrad’s understanding of Satan, see Joyner, Painting, 27–29. 51. “In eadem quoque pelle quidam tenebrosus ignis tanti horroris est quod eum intueri non potes: qui declarat quod in pessimis et in nequissimis insidiis antiqui perditoris taeterrimum homicidium tanti feruoris erumpit quod insaniam illius humanus intellectus discernere non ualet; qui totam pellem illam sua fortitudine concutit: quoniam homicidium omnes diabolicas malignitates suo horrore complectitur, cum in primogenitis ab ira odium ebulliens fratricidium perpetrauit, plenus sonituum, tempestatum et acutissimorum lapidum maiorum et minorum: . . . ​Qui dum sonitum suum eleuat, ille lucidus ignis et uenti et aer commouentur: quoniam dum homicidium in auaritia effusionis sanguinis stridet, superna iudicia et expirationes uolantium rumorum et expansiones fluentium dispositionum in ultione recti iudicii suscitantur, . . .” Scivias I.iii.10, 196–204, 208–13, 45; 96. 52. He is chained to a rock in the abyss; the location of the abyss in the cosmological scheme is difficult to discern, although Satan’s connection with the dark zone is clear. It is problematic to be overly literal in this instance. 53. Genesis 3:14–15: “And the Lord God said to the serpent: ­Because thou hast done this ­t hing, thou art cursed among all c­ attle, and beasts of the earth: upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. I ­w ill put enmities between thee and the ­woman, and thy seed and her seed: she s­ hall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” 54. “Et uidi etiam ex ore ipsius acutissimas sagittas perstrepentes, et a pectore eius nigrum fumum uolantem ac a lumbis ipsius ardentem umorem ebullientem, et ab umbilico eius feruidum turbinem flantem atque ab extremitate uentris ipsius uelut immunditiam ranarum scaturientem, . . . ​Sed et de



Notes to Pages 146–150

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ipso taeterrima nebula cum pessimo foetore egrediens multos homines sua peruersitate infecit.” Scivias II.vii.preface, 119–24, 126–28, 310; 294. The idea that frogs are unclean begins with Leviticus 10:11: all ­t hings that live in the w ­ aters but have not fins and scales are unclean; and then too in Exodus 8, with the plague of frogs; and in Apoc. 16:13, which relates more directly to Satan: “And I saw from the mouth of the dragon, and from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs.” 55. See, for example, Fiona J. Griffiths, “ ‘Like the S­ ister of Aaron’: Medieval Religious ­Women and Liturgical Textiles,” in Female “Vita religiosa” Between Late Antiquity and High ­Middle Ages: Structures, Developments and Spatial Contexts, ed. Gert Melville and Anne Müller (Berlin: LIT, 2011), 343–74. 56. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Ingrid De Meûter and her staff at the museum, who allowed me to spend time with the antependium, for her useful observations about it, and for the kind permission of the museum to publish this photo­graph. 57. See Stefanie Seeberg, “Illustrated Textiles at the Monasteries of Altenberg/Lahn, Rupertsberg, and Heiningen (13th–14th c.),” in Reassessing the Roles of W ­ omen as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 355–91; Leonie von Wilckens, “Das goldgestickte Antependium aus Kloster Rupertsberg,” Pantheon 35 (1977): 3–10; Jeffery Hamburger, Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern, International loan exhibition, Kunst-­und Austellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, and Ruhrland Museum, Essen, March 17–­ July 3, 2005, co-­conceived with Jan Gerchow and Robert Suckale, coedited with Lothar Altringer, Carola Jäggi, Susan Marti, Petra Marx, and Hedwig Röckelein (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2005); and Hamburger and Susan Marti, eds., Crown and Veil: The Art of Female Monasticism in the M ­ iddle Ages (translation of essays from the cata­logue Krone und Schleier), foreword by Caroline W. Bynum, trans. Dietlinde Hamburger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). See also Elizabeth Kramer, “A Case Study of the Rupertsberg Antependium” (Master’s thesis, University of Missouri-­ Columbia, 1999). Identifications of figures in the antependium are made by the study of their labels and their corresponding entries in con­temporary necrologies. 58. Ordo virtutum, ed. and trans. Dronke in Nine Medieval Latin Plays, lines 218–27, pp. 178–79. 59. Higley, Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language. 60. See, for example, Ambrose, Exaemeron, IV.8.31–32, 136–38, in Opera, Pars Prima, ed. Carl Schenkl, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 32 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1897). 61. “De hac ascensionis eius gloria etiam Habacuc ait: Eleuatus est sol et luna stetit in ordine suo (Hab. 3.11). Quis enim solis nomine nisi Dominus, et quae lunae nomine nisi ecclesia designatur?”; Gregory the G ­ reat, Homiliae in euangelia, ed. Raymond Etaix, CCSL 141 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), Homilia XXIX.9, p.  253. For an En­g lish translation of the homily, see M.  J.  B. Allen and Daniel Calder, Sources and Analogues of Old En­glish Poetry: The Major Latin Sources in Translation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1976), 79–81, at 80. For an En­g lish synopsis of fundamental studies of the symbolic meanings of the moon, see Hugo Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery, trans. Brian Battershaw (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 89–176. 62. Ann Astell provides a Mariological interpretation of the figure of the Church, collecting Christ’s blood at the foot of the Cross: “ ‘Memoriam Fecit’: The Eucharist, Memory, Reform, and Regeneration in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias and Nicholas of Cusa’s Sermons,” in Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal, ed. Christopher  M. Bellitto and David Zachariah Flanagin (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 2012), 190–213. 63. “Et post haec uidi cum Filius Dei in cruce pependit quod praedicta muliebris imago uelut lucidus splendor ex antiquo consilio propere progrediens per diuinam potentiam ad ipsum adducta est, et sanguine qui de latere eius fluxit se sursum eleuante perfusa ipsi per uoluntatem superni Patris felici desponsatione associata est atque carne et sanguine eius nobiliter dotata.” Scivias II.vi.preface, 190–97,

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229–30; 237. See Apoc. 21:2: “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” 64. “et ideo in sponso suo sacerdotium et omne ministerium altaris mei habet.” Scivias II.vi.76, 2211–12, 290; 278. 65. Saurma-­Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im “Liber scivias,” 112–21, references the Gospel Book of Henry the Lion, fol. 170v, which depicts Christ on the Cross, with a ­woman catching blood from his side in a chalice. 66. “ ‘Haec, Fili, sit tibi sponsa in restaurationem populi mei, cui ipsa mater sit, animas per salvationem spiritus et aquae regenerans.’ ” Scivias II.vi.preface, 199–201, 230; 237. 67. “. . . ​et hoc nolo abscondere quia electos eius sursum ad caelestia traho, quatenus per ipsos corpus eius in praeelectis membris perficiatur.” Scivias II.vi.18, 742–44, 246; 247. 68. Anna Esmeijer’s study on Cross iconography demonstrates the belief that the shape of the cross had both earthly and cosmic proportions. See her Divina quaternitas: A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application of Visual Exgesis (Amsterdam: Van Gorkum, 1978). Artistic themes employed by Hildegard in the paintings associated with the Eucharist draw on ideas prevalent at the time: see Elizabeth Saxon, “Carolingian, Ottonian, and Romanesque Art and the Eucharist,” in Companion to the Eucharist in the M ­ iddle Ages, ed. Ian Christopher Levy, Gary Macy, and Kristen Van Ausdall (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 251–324. Relationships between text and image in three of Hildegard’s contemporaries are studied in Michael Curschmann, “­Imagined Exegesis: Text and Pictures in the Exegetical Works of Rupert of Deutz, Honorius Augustodunensis, and Gerhoch of Reichersberg,” Traditio 44 (1988): 145–69. 69. For discussion of Hildegard’s sequences, long chants to be sung at the Mass liturgy, and their connections to her cosmic understandings, see my “The Cosmos and the Altar.” 70. “Sed et ibi euangelio pacis recitato et oblatione quae consecranda erat altari superposita, cum idem sacerdos laudem omnipotentis Dei quod est ‘sanctus sanctus sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth’ decantaret et sic mysteria eorundem sacramentorum inchoaret, repente ignea coruscatio inaestimabilis claritatis aperto caelo super eandem oblationem descendit et eam totam sua claritate ita perfudit ut sol rem illam illustrat quam radiis suis transfigit. Et dum eam hoc modo irradiaret, sursum eam ad secreta caeli inuisibiliter sustulit et iterum eam deorsum super idem altare remisit, . . .” Scivias II.vi. preface, 213–25, 230; 237. See also M. Jennifer Bloxam, “ ‘Cum angelis et archangelis’: Singing a Sacramental Cosmology in the Medieval Christian West,” in Full of Your Glory, ed. Berger, 211–30. 71. “Sed sub eadem pelle purissimus aether erat, sub se nullam pellem habens, in quo etiam quendam globum candentis ignis plurimaeque magnitudinis uidebam, super se duas faculas sursum clare positas habentem, ipsumque globum ne modum cursus sui excederet continentes. Et in eodem aethere multae et clarae sphaerae ubique positae fuerant, in quas idem globus interdum se aliquantulum euacuans claritatem suam emisit, et ita sub praefatum rubeum igneumque globum recurrens et ab eo flammas suas restaurans, iterum illas in easdem sphaeras efflauit.” Scivias I.iii.preface, 70–81, 40–41; 93. 72. Scivias I.iii.12 (En­g lish translation, p. 97). 73. In the last of her set of antiphons for St. Ursula, Hildegard raised this specific charge against Satan: “But the devil in his envy / made a mockery of it: / by envy he has left no work of God / untouched”; Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 238–39; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 463. 74. “In terra enim in homine complebo quod in caelis facere uolui, scilicet ut Altissimo similis essem. Et si Deus iustus est, potestas ista mihi non auferetur, quia homo mihi consensit et Deo non oboediuit . . . ​diabolus subsecutus est, unde et eum sibi tam fortiter alligauit, quod homo illum pro Deo coluit et Deum creatorem suum abnegauit.” Scivias II.vi.101, 2680–84, 2685–88, 304–5; 288. The irony of the situation cannot be missed: Satan is appealing ­here to God’s sense of justice to allow for his own domination over h ­ uman beings.



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75. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 1, Letter 23, p. 79. 76. Hugh Feiss argues that what was dedicated in 1152 was a chapel for St. Rupert and that the larger church was dedicated ­later. See the introduction to Hildegard of Bingen, Two Hagiographies, p. 22, n. 62. 77. In the commentaries in her edition of the Symphonia (1998), 314–17, Barbara Newman describes po­liti­cal situations that may be reflected in the texts. 78. In her edition and translation Barbara Newman numbers them 66–69. See Opera minora, 469–72, and for the En­g lish translations, Symphonia, 250–55, with notes on pp. 314–17. 79. The text circulated widely and Hildegard surely would have known it. It was associated with feasts for the Cross (May 3 and September 14) as well as other occasions. See AH 50, no. 67, pp. 74–75. 80. Symphonia, ed. Newman, 250–51; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 469: “Sed o quam preciosus est sanguis Salvatoris / qui in uexillo regis / Ecclesiam ipsi desponsauit, / unde filios illius requirit.” 81. See Symphonia, ed. Newman, 316, and Higley, Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language. 82. Symphonia, ed. Newman, 252–53; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 471. (O, o, tu es etiam crizanta in alto sono et es chorzta gemma). 83. Symphonia, ed. Newman, 254–55; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 472: “O choruscans lux stellarum,/ o splendidissima specialis forma/ regalium nuptiarum,/ o fulgens gemma:/ tu es ornata in alta persona/ que non habet maculatam rugam./ Tu es etiam socia angelorum/ et ciuis sanctorum./ Fuge, fuge speluncam/ antiqui perditoris,/ et ueniens ueni in palatium regis.” Th ­ ere is reference h ­ ere to the first Scivias chant, “O splendidissima gemma,” discussed above, as well as to Psalm 44, featured in Offices for the Virgin Mary and for other Holy Virgins. The cave in this lyric is also found in the sequence for St. Rupert discussed in Chapter 3. 84. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 1, Letter 52, p. 127. 85. Ibid., Letter 52r, p. 129. 86. Scivias II.v.6, 205. 87. Scivias II.v.7, 205–6.

Chapter 6 1. See 1 Kings 6:2–36, the description of Solomon’s t­ emple, which references the length, breadth, and other mea­sure­ments of the building. Hildegard’s Edifice can be compared for similarities and differences with the structures made by her con­temporary Richard of St.-­Victor: see Walter Cahn, “Architecture and Exegesis: Richard of St.-­Victor’s Ezekiel Commentary and Its Illustrations,” Art Bulletin 76 (1994): 53–68. Hildegard’s Edifice is compared to Langland’s barn in Piers Plowman in Barbara Newman, “The Burdens of Church History in the M ­ iddle Ages,” Church History 83 (2014): 1009–13. Claire Barbetti, “Secret Designs/Public Shapes: Ekphrastic Tensions in Hildegard’s Scivias,” in Reading Memory and Identity in the Texts of Medieval Eu­ro­pean Holy W ­ omen, ed. Margaret Cotter-­Lynch and Brad Herzog (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 81–104 situates the Edifice of Salvation in the context of lit­er­a­ture on the art of memory, and Peter Dronke describes the Edifice in relationship to several of Hildegard’s apparent sources, including both the City of God and The Shepherd of Hermas: Peter Dronke, “The Symbolic Cities of Hildegard of Bingen,” Journal of Medieval Latin 1 (1991): 168–83. 2. See Barbara Maurmann, Die Himmelsrichtungen im Weltbild des Mittelalters: Hildegard von Bingen, Honorius Augustodunensis und andere Autoren, Münsterische Mittelalter-­Schriften 33 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1976); Karl Patrick Kinsella, “Teaching Through Architecture: Honorius Augustodunensis and the Medieval Church,” in Mihol Long et al., eds., Horizontal Learning in the High

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­Middle Ages, 141–62 and the excellent summary in Saurma-­Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im “Liber scivias,” 134–39. The heavenly Jerusalem of Hugh of St.-­Victor is explored in g­ reat detail in Rudolph, The Mystical Ark. A summation of some of Rudolph’s ideas can be found in his “The City of the G ­ reat King: Jerusalem in Hugh of St. Victor’s Mystical Ark,” in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-­Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 343–52. The “spatial turn” in recent scholarship is introduced in Anna Gutgarts, “The Earthly Landscape of the Heavenly City: A New Framework for the Examination of the Urban Development of Frankish Jerusalem,” Al-­ Masāq 28 (2016): 265–81. Other overviews are found in Meredith Cohen, Fanny Madeline, and Dominique Iogna-­Prat, introduction to Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and ­Imagined Geographies, ed. Meredith Cohen and Fanny Madeline (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 1–20; Megan Cassidy-­Welch, “Space and Place in Medieval Contexts,” Parergon 27/2 (2010): 1–12; and Suzanne M. Yeager, “The Earthly and Heavenly Jerusalem,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Lit­er­a­ture of the Crusades, ed. Anthony Bale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1:121–35. For essays that relate to w ­ omen and often to church architecture, see Victoria Blud, Diane Heath, and Einat Klafter, eds., Gender in Medieval Places, Spaces and Thresholds, Institute of Historical Research Conference Series (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2019). 3. Rudolph, “The City of the G ­ reat King,” 345. 4. See Dronke, “The Symbolic Cities of Hildegard of Bingen.” 5. Ibid., 172–73. 6. Rudolph says: “The sacraments of faith, however, do fundamentally change from period to period. As described in De sacramentis, the preeminent sacrament of the period of the written law, the period before the coming of Christ, was circumcision; indeed, this is so much the case that, according to Hugh, it is with God’s command to Abraham concerning circumcision that the period of the written law begins (that is, not with the giving of the written law to Moses)”; “The City of the ­Great King,” 350. See also Hugh of St.-­Victor, De sacramentis I.xii (1–3), pp. 250–53 in the En­g lish translation; and in the Latin, ed. Rainier Berndt (Monasterii Westfalorum [i.e., Münster]: Aschendorff, 2008), 253–55. 7. “Jerusalem is, in short, not simply the place where heaven and earth meet. It is the destination where all truths, all maps, and all cities would, with the passing of time, become as one.” Jay Rubenstein, “Heavenly and Earthly Jerusalem: The View from Twelfth-­Century Flanders,” in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. Kühnel, Noga-­Banai, and Vorholt, 265–76, at 276. See also Alessandro Scafi, “Mapping the End: The Apocalypse in Medieval Cartography,” Lit­er­a­ture and Theology 26 (2012): 400–416. 8. William Flynn presented evidence that Hildegard’s Edifice of Salvation has correspondences with the a­ ctual monastic buildings being constructed in Hildegard’s lifetime on the Disibodenberg in his “Building up the Virtues: Hildegard’s Scivias and Construction on the Disibodenberg, 1112– 1146” (presented at the Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 10, 2014). For the architecture of the Disibodenberg and the Rupertsberg, see especially Dethard von Winterfeld, “Kirchen am Lebenswig der Hildegard von Bingen,” in Hildegard von Bingen, ed. Haverkamp and Reverchon, 129–59. 9. On the many and diverse meanings of the “north,” see V ­ irginia Langum and Dolly Jørgensen, eds., Visions of North in Premodern Eu­rope, Cursor Mundi 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), especially the editors’ introduction, pp. 1–11. Throughout Scivias, Hildegard works with an idea of the north as a source and location for evil, and this sense operates in both the Cosmic Egg and the Edifice of Salvation. 10. Von Winterfeld, “Kirchen am Lebenswig,” 159. The drawing shows the rounded apse to have three win­dows, suggesting that the area where the main altar was located would have been brilliantly illumined. 11. For allegorical journeys through a very dif­fer­ent kind of structure, see Craig Wright, The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and ­Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).



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12. Christ as the cornerstone of an edifice has many references in the New Testament and resonances in the First Testament. See, for example, Matthew 21:42–44, Acts 4:11, Ephesians 2:14–22, and 1 Peter 2:6–8. Some resonances commonly cited by Christian exegetes are Isaiah 8:14, Isaiah 28:16, Daniel 2:34–35, and Psalm 117:22–23. For the use of this commonplace in poetry with architectural allusions, see Lori Ann Garner, Structuring Spaces: Oral Poetics and Architecture in Early Medieval ­England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011). 13. Hildegard says: “God works from the East, to the North, to the West, to the South” (Scivias III.x.32); but chronological time in the Edifice has another plan as well. For discussion of the ways in which the architectural plan functions, and how the play Ordo virtutum fits into it, see my “Allegorical Architecture,” and, in greater detail, Chapters 7 and 8. 14. ­These fourteen chants and their liturgical significances and their relationship to the final painting are discussed in Chapter 8. 15. Scivias III.x.32; En­g lish translation on p. 489. 16. Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 98–99; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 173–74. 17. The brief quotations from Scivias in this paragraph are all from Scivias III.x.32, pp. 572–73 in the critical edition and 489–90 in the En­g lish translation. 18. The critical edition of the text of the Ordo virtutum is by Peter Dronke in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 505–21. The m ­ usic of the play has been edited by Vincent Corrigan, Ordo virtutum: A Comparative Edition. Peter Dronke translated the Ordo virtutum into En­g lish in his Nine Medieval Latin Plays, 160–81. 19. Th ­ ere are many treatises and fragments of treatises on virtues and vices in circulation from the Latin ­Middle Ages; for an overview of the tradition, see Richard Newhauser, The Treatise on Vices and Virtues in Latin and the Vernacular (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), and for manuscript sources, see Richard Newhauser and István Bejczy, A Supplement to Morton W. Bloomfield et al. Incipits of Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008). Par­t ic­u ­lar to Hildegard’s period are the essays in Richard Newhauser and István Bejczy, eds., Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth C ­ entury (Boston: Brill, 2005). 20. See discussion in Dronke, “The Symbolic Cities of Hildegard of Bingen,” especially pp. 169–71. 21. Th ­ ere was a copy of the book in the twelfth-­century library at the Benedictine monastery of Bec, in Normandy: see Giles E. M. Gasper and Faith Wallis, “Anselm and the ‘Articella,’ ” Traditio 59 (2004): 129–74, at 165. Proof of the text’s existence in Trier is suggested by a fragment of the work in a ninth-­century codex originally from St. Maximus (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n. acq. lat. 763). The most thorough examination of Hildegard’s probable sources to date is Peter’s Dronke’s introductory study to the Corpus Christianorum edition of her Liber divinorum operum. 22. See The Shepherd of Hermas, ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman, in The Apostolic ­Fathers, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library 25 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 162–473. The edition has the Greek text on one side of the pages and the En­g lish translation on the other. 23. Ibid., 373–75. 24. Parables, 9.4: 81; Shepherd of Hermas, 395–97. 25. General overviews of the visualization of the Virtues and Vices are found in Joanne S. Norman, Metamorphoses of an Allegory: The Iconography of the Psychomachia in Medieval Art (New York: P. Lang, 1988); Johann Reidemeister, Superbia und Narziss: Personifikation und Allegorie in Miniaturen mittelalterlicher Handschriften (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006); and Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art: From Early Christian Times to the Thirteenth C ­ entury, trans. Alan J. P. Crick (London: Warburg Institute, 1939; repr. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1968). 26. Hildegard wrote a commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, and in it she mentions the Discretion of God, applying this virtue to Benedict; she says Benedict made a wall of sanctity from

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Charity; that he wrote in Fear and in Piety, in Charity and in Chastity. Th ­ ese are the only virtues Hildegard mentions in the commentary. Humility, Hildegard’s Queen of the Virtues, is essential in the Rule of St. Benedict as well. See De regula sancti Benedicti, in Hildegardis Bingensis Opera minora, ed. Hugh Feiss, CCCM 226 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 67–97, especially at 68. 27. In addition to t­ hose discussed, other Carolingian authors with treatises on Virtues and Vices include Alcuin: see Luitpold Wallach, “Alcuin on Virtues and Vices: A Manual for a Carolingian Soldier,” Harvard Theological Review 48 (1955): 175–95; and Ambrosius Autpertus, Libellus de conflictu vitiorum atque virtutum; see Robert Weber, “La prière d’Ambroise Autpert contre les vices et son ‘Conflictus vitiorum et virtutum,’ ” Revue bénédictine 86 (1976): 109–15. 28. Ed. Wallace M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), vol. 1, Book VII, v, lines 5–7; The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Barney, 161. For Rabanus’s quotation of Isidore on the Virtues, see his De universo I, v, PL 111, col. 29. 29. Architectural imagery as found in Rabanus’s De universo is discussed in Dale Kinney, “The Discourse of Columns,” in Rome Across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas c. 500–1400, ed. Claudia Bolgia et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 182–99. 30. On the program of arts associated with the Speculum, see Morgan Powell, “Paradisum speculatorium in picturam ponere: Developing a Picture Program as the ‘Mirror of Virgins,’ ” in Diagramm und Text: Diagrammatische Strukturen und die Dynamisierung von Wissen und Erfahrung, ed. Eckart Conrad Lutz, Vera Jerjen, and Christine Putzo (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2014), 123–56. 31. See Constant Mews, “Hildegard of Bingen and the Hirsau Reform in Germany, 1080–1180,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Kienzle, Stoudt, and Ferzoco, 57–83. Mews says (at p. 80): “Monastic ­houses that emulated Hirsau w ­ ere ­f ree to develop their own practices within the framework of a common liturgical tradition. Many of the monastic communities with whom Hildegard had close contact shared a common debt to Hirsau without being bound together by any formal ecclesiastical structure. The absence of any overriding liturgical rules made it quite pos­si­ble for Hildegard, once she had moved to Rupertsberg, to introduce her own melodies into the liturgy.” 32. London, British Library, Arundel 44, from the Cistercian monastery Eberbach am Rhein, is the earliest known copy (see further discussion of this manuscript below). Hildegard visited Eberbach and exchanged letters with the monks; a now-­lost twelfth-­century copy of Scivias was in this monastery: see Scivias, ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, I, xlii–­x liii. On the SV, see Listen, ­Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious W ­ omen in the M ­ iddle Ages, ed. Constant Mews (New York: Palgrave, 2001). This collection contains many impor­tant essays on the treatise, which is edited by Jutta Seyfarth in CCCM 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990) and translated by her into German: Speculum virginum = Jungfrauenspiegel (New York: Herder, 2001). See also Joyner, Painting, 30–41 for discussion of Herrad’s probable knowledge of this treatise and its influences on her thought, with reference to Hildegard as well. 33. In her ­later treatises Hildegard continues exploration of the virtues, adding more, and introducing their counter­parts, the vices, unlike in Scivias, where her work is more concentrated, and the Devil stands in for his minions. 34. See Fassler, “Angels and Ideas.” 35. Scivias III.iii.1; En­g lish translation, 344. 36. Scivias II.iii.20; En­g lish translation, 176–77. 37. Scivias III.iv.6, 359–60. 38. See especially Scivias III.v.31. 39. Scivias III.vi.19; En­g lish translation, 397. 40. Scivias III.ix.preface, 451. 41. Newman, ­Sister of Wisdom, 64.



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42. Sermon CCLVI, PL 38, col. 1190; see Giles Constable, “The Concern for Sincerity and Understanding in Liturgical Prayer, Especially in the Twelfth ­Century,” in Classica et mediaevalia: Studies in Honor of Joseph Szövérffy, ed. Irene Vaslef and Helmut Buschhausen (Washington, DC: Brill, 1986), 17–30.

Chapter 7 1. An excursus on the subject of liturgical change is found in my book Gothic Song, 3–17. 2. For an overview and bibliography on the prophets’ plays, see Robert C. Lagueux, “Sermons, Exegesis, and Per­for­mance: The Laon Ordo Prophetarum and the Meaning of Advent,” Comparative Drama 43 (2009): 197–220. The new edition and translation of the Play of Antichrist ­w ill emphasize the po­liti­cal context of this mid-­t welfth-­century work: The Play About the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo): A New Verse Translation, Edition, and Commentary, ed. and trans. Carol Symes with Kyle A. Thomas (forthcoming). 3. Margot  E. Fassler, “Repre­sen­ta­tions of Time in Ordo Representacionis Ade: Introduction,” Yale French Studies, special issue (1991): 97–113. 4. For overviews, see Mary Schaefer, “Latin Mass Commentaries from the Ninth Through the Twelfth Centuries: Chronology and Theology,” in Fountain of Life, ed. Gerard Austin and Neils Krogh Rasmussen (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1991), 35–49, and Gary Macy, “Commentaries on the Mass During the Early Scholastic Period,” in Medieval Liturgy: A Book of Essays, ed. Lizette Larson-­Miller (New York: Garland, 1997), 25–59. 5. Especially impor­tant in this critique of the classical works of E. K. Chambers (The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903]) and Karl Young (The Drama of the Mediaeval Church, 2 vols. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933]) are O.  B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the ­Middle Ages: Essays in the Origin and Early History of Modern Drama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965) and the many writings of C. Clifford Flanigan; for an overview of Flanigan’s publications, see his Gedenkschrift Liturgy and the Arts in the M ­ iddle Ages: Studies in Honour of C. Clifford Flanigan, ed. Eva Louise Lillie and Nils Holger Petersen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, 1996). Both Hardison and Flanigan w ­ ere champions of the importance of re-­placing dramatic works into their liturgical contexts. Writing very much in this vein as well is the much-­published Danish scholar Nils Holger Petersen. See, for example, his edited volume The Appearances of Medieval Rituals: The Play of Construction and Modification (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). 6. Michael Norton, Liturgical Drama and the Reimagining of Medieval Theater (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2017): much of the study offers a very useful detailed historiographical investigation, with copious bibliography. 7. Michal Kobialka, This Is My Body: Repre­sen­ta­tional Practices in the Early M ­ iddle Ages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), especially the introduction, 1–34. 8. Quodvultdeus, Opera Quodvultdeo Carthaginiensi episcopo tributa, ed. R. Braun, CCSL 60 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 225–58. 9. Marius Sepet, Les Prophètes du Christ: Étude sur les origines du théâtre au Moyen âge (Paris: Didier, 1878); Karl Young, “Ordo Prophetarum,” Transactions of the Wisconsin Acad­emy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 20 (1922): 1–82; Fassler, “Repre­sen­ta­t ions of Time”; Lagueux, “Sermons, Exegesis, and Per­for­mance”; Clyde Brockett, “A Previously Unknown Ordo Prophetarum in a Manuscript Fragment in Zagreb,” Comparative Drama 27/1 (1993): 114–27. 10. The most detailed descriptions are found in the prophets’ play enacted in the twelfth c­ entury in the Cathedral of Laon (Laon MS 263), studied in some detail by Robert Lagueux. He notes, for example, that Nebuchadnezzar is to pre­sent himself as haughty, whereas the Sibyl is to act like a

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crazed person; Moses is to carry a tablet of law, John the Baptist is hirsute, and Isaiah wears a red dalmatic (Lagueux, “Sermons, Exegesis and Per­for­mance,” 197). 11. Regula Meyer Evitt, “Anti-­Judaism and the Medieval Prophet Plays: Exegetical Contexts for the ‘Ordines Prophetarum’ ” (PhD diss., University of ­Virginia, 1992); and her “Eschatology, Millenarian Apocalypticism, and the Liturgical Anti-­Judaism of the Medieval Prophet Plays,” in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, ed. Richard Landes et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 205–29. 12. Engelberg 103, fols. 5v–6r. 13. Peter Dronke, in his introduction to the Ordo virtutum in his Nine Medieval Latin Plays (148), says: “Hildegard ­here combines the tradition of a ‘play of the Prophets’ (Ordo prophetarum), in which Old Testament figures are summoned to reveal the umbra of the New, with that of the ­battle of the virtues and vices in and for the h ­ uman soul, in the fifth-­century poetic allegory the Psychomachia, of Prudentius.” 14. On the Mariology of a prophets’ play in another vein, see Fassler, “Repre­sen­ta­t ions of Time.” 15. A parallel to my analy­sis of Hildegard’s prophetic voice can be found in Michael Gardiner’s analy­sis of the Ordo virtutum. He works with Hildegard as a neo-­Platonist, drawing on Augustine and other writers in the tradition. As explained in Chapter 1, Hildegard prob­ably took her Plato from several sources, most notably Calcidius, and of course Augustine: the influence is not to be denied. My reading depends rather on the framework of Scivias, her graphic use of ­music, word painting, and musical puns, and her borrowing of the tradition of the Ordo prophetarum. However, in many ways my study parallels the work of Gardiner, although reasoned in liturgical and theological modes, for we both emphasize the conflicts Hildegard created through tonal areas and her uses of musical memory. 16. Hildegard’s compositions often use such a pro­cess, offering material at the opening, expanding and contracting it in the course of the piece, especially through the use of couplet structure, and concluding through restatement. See, for example, “O uirtus sapientie,” Example 6.1, discussed in Chapter 6. 17. See Chapter 6 and my “Angels and Ideas” for a fuller definition of the virtues in Hildegard’s theology. 18. See my “Allegorical Architecture” and Alison Altstatt, “The Ordo virtutum and Benedictine Monasticism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain 235–56, for discussions that include other comparative ­tables, including virtues found in the Rule of St. Benedict, the Exhortatio virtutum in Scivias, and the Speculum virginum; and in Altstatt also the ceremony for the taking of the veil as found in the Mainz pontifical (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 946) and the virtues in the Psychomachia by Prudentius. 19. As can be seen in ­Table 7.1, the last of this group in Scivias is Grace of God, who has a masculine face and does not get incorporated into the OV. 20. An overview is provided in a series of publications by Arthur Watson: “The Speculum Virginum [London, BL MS Arundel 44] with Special Reference to the Tree of Jesse,” Speculum 3 (1928): 445–69. See also his Early Iconography of the Jesse Tree (London: Oxford University Press, 1934); and Watson, “A Manuscript of the Speculum Virginum in the Walters Art Gallery,” Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 10 (1947): 61–74. The Jesse tree image in Arundel 44 is very close to that in the leaf from a liturgical book pictured in Plate XII. 21. Scholars have long realized that Hildegard built a Jesse tree of sorts in the play. For bibliography and an excellent overview of t­ hese ideas and the role of the concept of viriditas within them, see especially Sara Ritchey, Holy ­Matter: Changing Perceptions of the Material World in Late Medieval Chris­tian­ity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 55–78. Ritchey calls the play “Enacting the Incarnation” (62).



Notes to Pages 193–195

313

22. See, for example, the Jesse tree found in London, British Library, Arundel MS 44, fol. 1v. This tradition of depicting the “Stirps Jesse” is quite dif­fer­ent from the depiction of Jesse at the bottom of the image, asleep, with his lineage rising from his loins, as is found in several French examples. The most famous example of this second type is the mid-­twelfth-­century “Stirps Jesse” lancet win­dow, part of the western facade of Chartres cathedral; for discussion of the work of art in its historical context, see my Virgin of Chartres: Making History Through Liturgy and the Arts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 23. David’s scroll quotes from this verse: “Domine, inclina caelos tuos, et descende; tange montes, et fumigabunt” (Lord, bow down thy heavens and descend: touch the mountains and they s­ hall smoke). 24. Cleveland Museum of Art: cutting from an antiphonary: Initial A[spiciens a longe]: The Tree of Jesse, https://­clevelandart​.­org​/­a rt​/­1949​.­202, ca. 1140–60. 25. See note 23 above, and also the collection Listen, ­Daughter, ed. Mews, referenced in Chapter 6. Mews does not believe that the SV had a particularly strong influence on Hildegard. 26. She says in Scivias I.ii.33 that it was humility that caused the Son of God to be born of the Virgin “in whom was found humility,” and that charity took the Only-­Begotten and placed him in the Virgin’s womb. Th ­ ese ideas relate directly to the discussion of t­ hese same virtues in Scivias III. viii, but in the latter they are brought forth as characters who speak and are depicted; and in the play, of course, they sing. 27. Scivias I.ii.11. 28. Just before the singing of “O uiuens fons” in Section 3 of the play, Anima calls Humility “true medicine.” Humility asks the virtues to bring Anima to her with all her scars “for the sake of Christ’s wounds.” 29. “Therefore, O Virginity, which by the ardent enkindling produced the greatest fruit, which shone in the star of the sea and fights the savage darts of the Devil and despises all shameful filth, rejoice in celestial harmony and hope for the com­pany of angels. How? The Holy Spirit makes m ­ usic in the tabernacle of Virginity; for she always thinks of how to embrace Christ in full devotion. She burns for love of Him and forgets the ­human frailties, which burn with carnal desire; she is joined to the One Husband Whom sin never touched, without any lust of the flesh, but flowering perpetually with Him in the joy of the regal marriage.” Scivias, III, viii, 16, p. 440. 30. See also William T. Flynn, “ ‘The Soul Is Symphonic’: Meditation on Luke 15:25 and Hildegard of Bingen’s Letter 23,” in ­Music and Theology: Essays in Honor of Robin A. Leaver, ed. Daniel Zager (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), 1–8. 31. She may also have seen a copy of an illuminated Speculum uirginum, with the ladder image that accompanies Epistle IX (see, for example, the image that accompanies Epistle IX of the Speculum uirginum in London, British Library, Arundel MS 44, fol. 93v). The ways in which the virtues are found with costumes and speeches in Scivias also appear in the Ordo virtutum (as well as in the EV, the playlet at the close of Scivias). As can also be seen in the t­ able in my “Allegorical Architecture,” most of the virtues featured in the play are also found in the Rule of St. Benedict, and many ­were also part of the tree of virtues found in the Speculum uirginum. 32. The greater number of t­ hese images from the twelfth c­ entury w ­ ere made in locations west of the Rhine. A wooden sculpture from Hildegard’s region and time shows Christ seated to the side on Mary’s knee rather than in front: Cologne, Schnütgen-­Museum, Die Holzskulpturen des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (1000–1400), ed. Ulrike Bergmann (Cologne: Museum Schnütgen, 1989), 139–40, fig. 7, p. 140. The classic overview of the subject is Ilene Forsyth, Throne of Wisdom: Wooden Sculptures of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1972). For the image as a symbol within a par­t ic­u ­lar community, see my Virgin of Chartres.

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Notes to Pages 196–198

33. “This same emphasis on final, fifth, and octave is a well-­documented and audible feature of the ­music of Hildegard, described by dozens of p ­ eople and given detailed analytical discussion in Pfau’s dissertation as well as in my early work” (Bain, “Hildegard, Hermannus, and Late Chant Style,” 128). For the foundational work of Marianne Richert Pfau, see especially her book with Stefan Johannes Morent, Hildegard von Bingen: Der Klang des Himmels, vol. 1 of Europaeische Komponistinnen, ed. A. Kreutziger-­Herr and Melanie Unseld (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005); Pfau’s essay that accompanies Barbara Newman’s edition and translation of the Symphonia (1998) is the first place to start for t­ hose who wish an introduction to some of the theoretical ideas at play in Hildegard’s chant. Michael Gardiner’s Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum: A Musical and Metaphysical Analy­sis is the most detailed theoretical study to date of the play. Jennifer Bain’s work on Hildegard is based on musical theoretical understandings focused primarily on Hildegard’s chants rather than the Ordo virtutum. In my study, written for a general, interdisciplinary audience, I have referenced this scholarly tradition in the notes for readers who wish to read more deeply in medieval m ­ usic theory and its pos­si­ble application to Hildegard’s compositional practice. My analy­sis is based on Hildegard’s work as a theologian/artist/composer and so takes all three strains of understanding into consideration. 34. For an overview of Hildegard’s probable theoretical knowledge, see Leigh-­Choate, Flynn, and Fassler, “Hearing the Heavenly Symphony,” 177–82, and Chapter 8, where some of ­t hese arguments are summarized with more detail. 35. His liturgical commentary Gemma animae was exceedingly popu­lar already in the twelfth ­century and is a treatise she could have read as she wrote the Ordo virtutum. The Gemma animae is about to appear in a new edition and En­g lish translation by Zachary Thomas and Gerhard Eger, and I am grateful to the editors for early access. The Gemma was written in Honorius’s ­middle period and thought to have been composed by around 1125; see Hermann Menhardt, “Der Nachlass des Honorius Augustodunensis,” Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterum und Deutsche Literatur 89/90 (1958– 59): 23–69. 36. On Hildegard’s prophetic voice, see especially Kerby-­Fulton, “Prophet and Reformer,” and Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Travis A. Stevens, “Intertextuality in Hildegard’s Works: Ezekiel and the Claim to Prophetic Authority,” in Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Kienzle, Stoudt, and Ferzoco, 137–62. 37. Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 163; the Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 507. See also Sonja Weiss, “Cloud and Clothe: Hildegard of Bingen’s Meta­phors of the Fall of the H ­ uman Soul,” Acta Neophilologica 49, nos. 1–2 (2016): 5–18. 38. See especially Timo Nisula, Augustine and the Function of Concupiscence (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 209. 39. Augustine, Against the Manichees II, xv, 21, p. 117, trans. Roland J. Teske, S.J., in Augustine, On Genesis: Two Books on Genesis, Against the Manichees and On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, An Unfinished Book, The ­Fathers of the Church 84 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1991), 21. “Even now nothing ­else happens in each of us when one falls into sin than occurred then in ­those three: the serpent, the ­woman and the man. For first the suggestion is made, ­whether by thought or by the senses of the body, by seeing or touching or hearing or tasting or smelling. When this suggestion has been made, if our desire is not aroused t­ oward sinning, the cunning of the serpent w ­ ill be excluded. If, however, it is aroused, it w ­ ill be as though the w ­ oman ­were already persuaded. At times reason checks and suppresses in a virile way even desire that has been aroused. When this happens, we do not fall into sin, but we are crowned for our modest strug­g le. But if reason consents and decides that what desire has stirred up should be carried out, man is expelled from the ­whole happy life as if from paradise. For the sin is already imputed to him, even if the deed is not carried out, since conscience is held guilty by reason of the consent” (Etiam nunc in unoquoque



Notes to Pages 198–209

315

nostrum nihil aliud agitur, cum ad peccatum quisque delabitur, quam tunc actum est in illis tribus, serpente, muliere, et viro. Nam primo fit suggestio sive per cogitationem, sive per sensus corporis, vel videndo, vel tangendo, vel audiendo, vel gustando, vel olfaciendo: quae suggestio cum facta fuerit, si cupiditas nostra non movebitur ad peccandum, excludetur serpentis astutia; si autem mota fuerit, quasi mulieri jam persuasum erit. Sed aliquando ratio viriliter etiam commotam cupiditatem refrenat atque compescit. Quod cum fit, non labimur in peccatum, sed cum aliquanta luctatione coronamur. Si autem ratio consentiat, et quod libido commoverit, faciendum esse decernat, ab omni vita beata tanquam de paradiso expellitur homo. Jam enim peccatum imputatur, etiamsi non subsequatur factum; quoniam rea tenetur in consensione conscientia). De Genesi contra Manichaeos II.xiv.21, PL 34, col. 207. 40. See Genesis 3:6–10. 41. See my “Angels and Ideas” and “Allegorical Architecture.” 42. Recent studies of “the voice” are especially relevant when it comes to Hildegard and her musical hermeneutic, especially as found in the Ordo virtutum, but in ­others of her compositions as well, as discussed in my “Angels and Ideas.” As Martha Feldman and Judith Zeitlin say in the introduction to their collected essays on the subject: “­There’s always something more to the voice—­a remainder, a gap, a reverb, an echo. To get at t­ hese more phantasmatic dimensions requires additional modes of inquiry, including the psychoanalytic, the literary, the mythic, and the philosophical”; “The Clamor of Voices,” in The Voice as Something More: Essays T ­ oward Materiality, ed. Martha Feldman and Judith T. Zeitlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), xiii. Hildegard adds the theological to this list. Satan’s “voice” pronounces far more than his words alone; it is the sound of loss and denial, of envy and of hatred. Embodied within its harsh spoken mode of speech is all the sorrow of humankind. 43. In her “Réaliser une vision: La dernière vision de Scivias et le drame Ordo virtutum de Hildegarde de Bingen,” Revue de musicologie 86 (2000): 37–63, Gunilla Iversen offers a detailed description of the final scene of the OV, and then relates the character of Anima to circumstances surrounding the nun Richardis, who departed from Hildegard to become an abbess just at the time that Hildegard was finishing Scivias. Indeed, as Iversen argues, Richardis may have been on Hildegard’s mind as she crafted the play and the ending of the treatise. The idea that Richardis’s be­hav­ior was inspired by pride and her desire to be the head of her own establishment may relate ­here as pride is the first sin, that of Satan himself. 44. See especially new work by Lucia Denk on Mariological quotations and illusions in Hildegard’s repertory, a study based on new kinds of investigation made pos­si­ble through software developed by scholars associated with the CANTUS database, including Jennifer Bain and Debra LaCoste. See Lucia Denk, “ ‘Tunc Tu Clamas Clara Voce’: Mariological Allusion and the ­Music of St. Hildegard of Bingen” (Master’s thesis, Dalhousie University, 2021) and Jennifer Bain, “­Music, Liturgy, and Intertextuality in Hildegard of Bingen’s Chant Repertory,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 209–34. 45. The source of this chant in the play is also identified in Hildegard von Bingen, Ordo virtutum, edited with commentary by Luca Ricossa (Geneva: Lulu, 2013), 28. 46. See also Bain, “­Music, Liturgy, and Intertextuality,” in Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, 209–34. 47. For a dif­fer­ent interpretation of this text, see Gardiner, Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo virtutum, 54–58, who does not reference the liturgical setting of this chant and chant text. 48. Ordo virtutum, Sequentia, EMI Deutsche Harmonia Mundi CDS 7 49249 8, 2 discs, 1982. 49. Scivias III.iii.2, 151–59, 375; 345. 50. One of which may well be an allusion to the ceremony of the taking of the veil, for which see Alison Altstatt’s essay “The Ordo virtutum and Benedictine Monasticism.”

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Notes to Pages 209–222

51. “Vincenti dabo edere de ligno uitae quod est in paradiso Dei mei: quia fons salutis mortem submergens riuulos suos in me transfudit et me uirentem in redemptione fecit.” Scivias III.x.13, 484– 86, 560; 481. 52. Miriam Schmitt, “Hildegard of Bingen: Viriditas, Web of Greening Life-­Energy,” American Benedictine Review 50 (1999): 253–76. 53. See Chapter 6 for discussion of the stones carried by virgins in The Shepherd of Hermas and Chapter 3 for discussion of the stones in the heavenly Jerusalem in the sequence for St. Rupert. 54. Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 165. The Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 509. 55. Scivias III.iii.9, 368–77, 381–82; 349. 56. See also Gardiner, Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo virtutum. 57. Anima’s sin sickness and its treatment call up Scivias III.viii.8 and the medical understandings spoken by the virtue Grace (who does not appear in the play). 58. Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 173. The Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 515. 59. Peter Dronke discusses the concept in his introduction to the critical edition of Hildegard’s third major theological treatise, the LDO: “the lucent and turbulent m ­ atter at the creation [of the cosmos] are necessary to each other. And the culmination of that mutual need is the dialectic of fall and redemption, the felix culpa: only a turbulent m ­ atter can be irradiated by a lucent, heavenly ­matter; only a fallen world can become a redeemed world” (lxii–­lxiii). The same is true of ­human beings and Hildegard is pointing that out, right at the start of the Ordo virtutum. 60. Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 174–77. The musical setting transforms Dronke’s parsing of the text. The Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 517–18. 61. The well-­k nown hymn “Aue Maris Stella,” familiar to Hildegard and to all who sang the medieval Latin liturgy, contains a pithy summary of the reversal of “eua” to “aue” in its second strophe: Sumens illud Aue Gabrielis ore, funda nos in pace, mutans Eue nomen. 62. See my “Composer and Dramatist: ‘Melodious Singing and the Freshness of Remorse,’ ” in Voice of the Living Light, ed. Newman. 63. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Mus. ms. 40047. 64. Dronke, “The Allegorical World-­Picture,” 3. 65. The final chant of the play, “In principio,” is discussed at length in Chapter 8. 66. See especially my “Allegorical Architecture.” 67. “I ­w ill put enmities between thee and the ­woman, and thy seed and her seed: she ­shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus). 68. “Tu nescis quid colis, quia uenter tuus uacuus est pulcra forma de uiro sumpta—­ubi transis preceptum quod deus in suaui copula precepit unde nescis quid sis!” Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 178–79; the Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 520.



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Chapter 8 1. See Corrigan, Hildegard of Bingen: Ordo virtutum, 3–5; the original is found in MS R, 478v. Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 180–81; text modified; the Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 521. 2. Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 160–61; the Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 505–6. 3. See Corrigan, Hildegard of Bingen: Ordo virtutum, 3–5; the original is found in MS R, 478v. Ordo virtutum: The Play of the Virtues, Dronke ed. and trans., 160–61; the Latin text is also found in Dronke’s edition of the Ordo virtutum in Hildegard’s Opera Minora, 505–6. 4. “O eterne Deus / nunc tibi placeat / ut in amore illo ardeas / ut membra illa simus / que fecisti in eodem amore, cum Filium tuum genuisti / in prima aurora / ante omnem creaturam / et inspice necessitatem hanc / que super nos cadit / et abstrahe eam a nobis / propter Filium tuum / et perduc nos in leticiam salutis.” En­g lish translation modified from Hildegard, Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 106; the Latin text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 380. 5. On the concept of viriditas more broadly, see Peter V. Loewen, “From the Roots to the Branches: Greennesss in the Preaching of Hildegard of Bingen and the Patriarchs,” Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 125–43 and essays by Irmgard Müller and Monika Klaes in Führkötter, ed. Kosmos und Mensch. 6. “Acutum habitaculum, ubi contritio et infelicitas non est, speciale speculum oculi Die in recto homine est, in quo idem oculus fortitudinem miraculorum suorum quasi in appetitu percutientis gladii uidet. Sed in procedentibus factis uelut in crescentibus fructibus superbi cordis, quod in propriis uoluptatibus suis ruinas aedificat, tristitia illa erit, quod idem superbum cor in spem hanc non confidit quae in superna saturitate floret.” Scivias III.xi.36, 743–50, 597; 507. 7. LDO III.v.23 (trans. Campbell, 459). 8. The mountain of choices described in Chapter 3 (Scivias I.i) is yet another way that Hildegard expressed this concept. 9. See also Fassler, “The Cosmos and the Altar.” 10. “Sed ne ex toto inobedientes exsisteremus, a diuinarum laudum canticis hactenus secundum eorum interdictum cessauimus, et a participatione dominci corporis, quam per singulos fere menses ex consuetudine frequentauimus, abstinuimus.” The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 1, no. 23, p. 76. Latin from Epistularium, CCCM 91, Ep. 23, p.61. 11. See especially Dronke’s notes to the critical edition of the text of the play in Hildegard, Opera minora, and the suggestion (p. 487), which o ­ thers have followed, that the play was written and performed for the solemn consecration of the Rupersberg convent on May 1, 1152. I have no quarrel with this idea, but I think that the play was intended to be performed more frequently than once, or even once a year, but rather that it was integrated into the ritual life of Hildegard’s community. 12. See Fassler, “Allegorical Architecture.” 13. “Ecclesia autem nondum in membris et in filiis suis perfecta est, sed in nouissimo die, cum numerus electorum implebitur, tunc et ecclesia plena est.” Scivias III.xi.22, 435–37, 587; 500. 14. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 3, no. 389, p. 184. 15. Hildegard also described the work of figures from the First Testament as adding to the golden number: “The rod by which Moses caused the divided ­water to flow together (Ex 14: 26–28) stands for the correction of the Law whereby God, through His Son, w ­ ill fill up the number which he had first established.” See The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 3, no. 389, p. 189. 16. “Ego, Humilitas, regia uirtutum, dico: uenite ad me, Virtutes, et enutriam uos ad requirendam perditam dragmam et ad coronandum in perseuerantia felicem.” Ordo virtutum, ed. and trans.

318

Notes to Pages 237–246

Dronke, in Nine Medieval Latin Plays, lines 68–71, 164, and 165 (En­g lish) and the critical edition in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 509. For the same text in the EV in En­g lish, see Scivias III.xiii.9, p. 530. 17. Scivias III.ii.19, translation modified, p. 335. 18. Scivias III.i.10, translation modified, p. 316. 19. Hildegard also used an understanding of wounds transformed into “gems” in the lyrical statement that closes out the magnificent treatise with songs known as the “Miscellany,” and offered as no. 390 in The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, vol. 3, trans. Baird and Ehrman, 193–204, at 204: “And so all creatures, which have life from You praise You, B ­ ecause You are the ointment beyond price, for open, festering wounds, And You transform them into rarest gems. Now deign to gather humankind to Yourself, and direct us to straight paths.” 20. “Tu ergo audi, homo, quia quamdiu tibi subueniendum est et quamdiu tu aliis hominibus succurrere potes, tamdiu passio Filii mei coram me in misericordia apparebit et tamdiu etiam caro et sanguis eius in alteri consecrabiter ad percipiendum credulis hominibus ad saluationem et ad purgationem criminum eorum. . . . ​In consecratione enim praedictae oblationis apparet quidquid Filius meus in carne sua pro redemptione hominis corporaliter passus est, et hoc nolo abscondere. . . .” Scivias II.vi.18, 727–32, 740–42, 246; 147. 21. “Post haec uidi: et ecce omnia elementa et omnes creaturae diro moto concussa sunt, ignis aer et aqua eruperunt et terram moueri fecerunt, fulgura et tonitrua concrepuerunt, montes et siluae ceciderunt, ita ut omne quod mortale erat uitam exhalaret. Et omnia elementa purgata sunt, ita ut quidquid in eis sordidum fuerat tali modo euanesceret, quod amplius non appareret.” Scivias III.xii.preface, 32–39, 604–5; 515. 22. Saurma-­Jeltz, Die Miniaturen im “Liber scivias,” points to a well-­k nown painting in the leaves from the mid-­thirteenth-­century de Brailes Hours (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 330, leaf 3), which bears many correspondences to the painting accompanying Scivias III.xii, including twin mandorlas at the top surrounding Christ that feature angels holding the arma Christi. For a painting in a book of hours from Metz from around 1300 that also has a similar reed scepter, see Adelaide Bennett, “Christ’s Five Wounds in the Aves of the Vita Christi in a Book of Hours About 1300,” in Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow: Studies in Painting and Manuscript Illumination of the Late ­Middle Ages and Northern Re­nais­sance, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger and Anne Korteweg (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 75–84, at 83 and n. 23. 23. See discussion of the winds in Chapter 5. 24. From Cause et cure: “Since the beginning of the world, the main winds have never been unleashed to their full power, and w ­ ill not be ­until the last day. When they fi­nally show their full strength and blow with their full power, then the clouds w ­ ill be torn apart by their massive collisions and the highest heavenly bodies w ­ ill be thrown down and dashed apart . . . ​t he firmament w ­ ill snap itself together in the way we fold a writing ­table together” (Holistic Healing, 5–6). 25. Cause et cure (Holistic Healing), 9. 26. Scivias III.xii.preface, 77–80, 94–99, 606; 515–16. 27. See Chapter 4 for discussion of Scivias II.i and the roundels of creation. 28. It is not typical in the visual arts of the period to show angels and saints with their mouths open, and in the act of singing. The angels in Scivias I.vi, for example, have closed mouths. H ­ umans depicted in the settings of choirs are also usually close-­mouthed. 29. See Appendix 3 for the responsory texts, in En­g lish and in Latin. 30. Scivias II.i.10, 153–54. 31. See Chapter 7 for the text and m ­ usic of this responsory. 32. “. . . ​est nobilissimum germen in caelesti Ierusalem, uidelicet gloria et decus illorum qui ob amorem uirginitatis sanguinem suum fuderunt, et qui etiam in candore humilitatis uirginitatem suam pro Christo obseruantes in suauitate pacis quieuerunt . . .” Scivias II.v.6, 313–17, 180–81; 205.



Notes to Pages 246–250

319

33. The texts of the Scivias chants are edited and translated by Barbara Newman in Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, 2nd ed; the Latin texts are also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora. 34. Full transcriptions of ­t hese chants are provided in Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia: A Comparative Edition, ed. Corrigan. I find the edition by Pudentiana Barth, M. Immaculata Ritscher, and Joseph Schmidt-­Görg, Lieder: Nach den Handschriften herausgegeben, useful ­because the square notation reveals patterns within the m ­ usic more readily than do most modern editions. The chants are also edited by Marianne Richert Pfau as Songs of the Living Light: Antiphons and Responsories. Hildegard’s chants have been transcribed in CANTUS, in versions from both manuscripts and in both texted and untexted forms. This means that they are available electronically and are searchable by melodic incipit, and ­w ill become increasingly searchable in the years to come, thanks to a new proj­ ect supervised by Jennifer Bain. The work on the ways in which Hildegard employs musical quotation and uses resonances to bind pieces is only beginning, and electronic searching of vari­ous kinds ­w ill make the investigation much more sophisticated than it has previously been, as demonstrated in the thesis of Lucia Denk. Of course, the best way to study the chants is from the original notation, and both major manucripts are now digitized and online (see Chapter 3). 35. Some of ­t hese chants have been discussed at length in ­earlier chapters of this study: “O splendidissima gemma” and “O gloriosissimi” in Chapter 4, and “O nobilissima uiriditatis” in Chapter 7. An early copy of “O uos imitatores” is discussed in the Introduction, making the point that t­ hese texts and their ­music w ­ ere seemingly composed by the time Scivias was finished. 36. See Chapter 4 for the complete text and m ­ usic of this chant. 37. See Chapter 5. 38. For the text in Latin and En­g lish, see Symphonia, ed. Newman, 132–33; for the ­music, see Symphonia, ed. Corrigan, 50–54. See also CANTUS, u ­ nder the incipit. Both editions supply critical notes. The Latin text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 400–401. 39. See Newman’s commentary on this text in her edition/translation of Hildegard’s Symphonia, 277–78. 40. “Nam in mistico misterio Dei, illustrata mente Virginis, mirabiliter clarus flos, ex ipsa Virgine exiuit.” En­glish and Latin from Symphonia, ed. Newman, 132–33, and in her edition in the Opera minora, 400–401. 41. See also Chapter 4, where ­these ideas are discussed with special attention to “O splendidissima gemma.” 42. The texts for the antiphon and the responsory for the angels are found in Latin and in En­g lish in Symphonia, ed. Newman, 154–57; the Latin texts also are found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 413–16; the m ­ usic for t­ hese chants is found in Symphonia, ed. Corrigan, 58–62, 63–69. Texts for the chants for the patriarchs and prophets are found in Symphonia, ed. Newman, 158–59, 160–61; the m ­ usic is found in Symphonia, ed. Corrigan, 71–73, 76–79. Both editions supply critical notes. The Latin texts are found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 413–16. 43. Dallin Baldwin has a forthcoming analy­sis of the responsory “O uos angeli.” See also Gunilla Iversen, “ ‘O vos angeli’: Hildegard’s Lyrical and Visionary Texts on the Celestial Hierarchies in the Context of Her Time,” in Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst: Hildegard von Bingen, 1098–1998, ed. Ranier Berndt (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 87–113, and Flynn, “Singing with the Angels.” 44. See discussion in Chapter 5 concerning the w ­ ater and blood coming from the side of the Crucified, captured by the allegorized ­woman in a chalice. The meanings of w ­ ater and its role in defining the power of the sacraments are also found in the antiphon “Vidi aquam” (Can 005403). This

320

Notes to Pages 251–255

chant was sung in place of the customary “Asperges” on Easter (and during Eastertide) in most places at the point of the cleansing rite of sprinkling the altar and the p ­ eople before the Mass; the antiphon was also sung during this season with a dif­fer­ent psalm verse from the usual from Psalm 50. The complete text reads: “Vidi aquam egredientem de templo, a latere dextro, alleluia: et omnes, ad quos pervenit aqua ista, salvi facti sunt, et dicent, alleluia, alleluia” (Ps. 117). “Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus: Quoniam in saeculum misericordia eius. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto: Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula sæculorum. Amen.” The antiphon “Vidi aquam” may be repeated both a­ fter the psalm verse and a­ fter the doxology. 45. See Chapter 7 for discussion of the text and m ­ usic of this dramatic chant. 46. Barbara Newman, notes to Symphonia, ed. Newman, 284. Newman’s notes to the lyr­ics provide keys to the imagery by tracking down major allusions to the Bible. The Latin for t­ hese texts is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 417–18. 47. The texts for the antiphon and the responsory for the Apostles are found in Latin and in En­ glish in Symphonia, ed. Newman, 163–65; the ­music for ­these chants is found in Symphonia, ed. Corrigan, 81–85, 87–90. Both editions supply critical notes. The Latin for t­ hese texts is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 419–20. 48. Symphonia, ed. Newman, 163. 49. See also Apoc. 7:17: “quoniam Agnus, qui in medio throni est, reget illos et deducet eos ad vitae fontes aquarum, et absterget Deus omnem lacrimam ab oculis eorum.” 50. Hildegard, Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 229–48. The Latin for t­hese texts is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 458–68. 51. Apoc. 19:6: “And I heard as it ­were the voice of a ­great multitude, and as the voice of many ­waters, and as the voice of ­great thunders, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord our God the Almighty hath reigned. 7: Let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath prepared herself. 8: And it is granted to her that she should clothe herself with fine linen, glittering and white. For the fine linen are the justifications of saints. 9: And he said to me: Write: Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith to me: ­These words of God are true.” 52. Texts of Hildegard’s responsory for Confessors, “O uos imitatores,” can be found in Latin and in En­g lish in Symphonia, ed. Newman, 174–75; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 425. The m ­ usic for this chant is in Symphonia, ed. Corrigan, 105–8. As this chant is also copied in one of the major letter collections, Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4 o 253 (Z), Corrigan edits the m ­ usic with three manuscripts rather than the usual two. 53. “O successores,” Symphonia, ed. and trans. Newman, 177. The Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 426. 54. See my “Hildegard and the Dawn Song of Lauds.” 55. See my “Composer and Dramatist,” in Voice of the Living Light, ed. Newman, esp. at pp. 166– 68, and Chapter 7, with discussion of Example 7.11. 56. “O nobilissima uiriditas / que radicas in sole / et que in candida serenitate / luces in rota / quam nulla terrena excellentia / comprehendit: / Tu circumdata es / amplexibus diuinorum ministeriorum. / Tu rubes ut aurora / et ardes ut solis flamma. / Tu circumdata es amplexibus diuinorum / ministeriorum.” En­glish trans. modified from Symphonia (1988), ed. and trans. Newman, 117; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 451. 57. Alison Altstatt is now studying the ways in which transposed mode 6 can serve as a gesture of triumph more generally in the chant repertory. 58. In the version found in the Riesencodex, the antiphon opens with the word “nunc” rather than “hodie.” Dronke thinks this was a l­ ater change to make the piece adaptable to a greater number



Notes to Pages 255–266

321

of festive occasions. Peter Dronke, Forms and Imaginings: From Antiquity to the Fifteenth ­Century (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007), 284. 59. The responsory is assigned to the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin in Engelberg 103, fol. 145r. 60. Text from Fassler, The Virgin of Chartres, 414. For discussion of this responsory, see Fassler, “Mary’s Nativity, Fulbert of Chartres, and the Stirps Jesse: Liturgical Innovation Circa 1000 and Its Afterlife,” Speculum 75 (2000): 389–434.} 61. En­glish translation modified from Symphonia (1988), ed. and trans. Newman, 218–19; the Latin for this text is also found in Newman’s edition of the Symphonia in Hildegard’s Opera minora, 386. 62. Scivias III.xiii.15, p. 534. 63. “Laudate, laudate ergo Deum beata uiscera in omnibus his miraculis quae Deus constituit in molli forma speciei Excelsi, quam ipse praeuidit in prima apparitione costae uiri illius quem Deus creauit.” Scivias III.xiii.16, 665–68, 636; 536. 64. As Barbara Newman points out in her notes to this chant, it is very unusual for Hildegard to give voice to a character in this way in her lyr­ics. 65. “O Fili dilectissime, quem genui in uisceribus meis de ui circueuntis rote sancte diuinitatis, que me creauit et omnia membra mea ordinauit et in uisceribus meis omne genus musicorum in omnibus floribus tonorum constituit: Nunc me et te, o Fili dulcissime, multa turba uirginum sequitur, quas per adiutorium tuum saluare dignare.” Symphonia, ed. Newman, 260; 474. 66. See Chapter 3 for discussion of “O Ierusalem.” 67. En­g lish translation by William T. Flynn in Leigh-­Choate, Flynn, and Fassler, “Hearing the Heavenly Symphony,” and as found in Cause et cure, II:312, 188: “Adam quoque ante preuaricationem angelicum carmen et omne genus musicorum sciebat et uocem habebat sonantem, ut uox monochordi sonat. In preuaricatione autem illius de astutia serpentis intorsit se in medullam et in femur eius quidam uentus, qui etiam nunc in omni homine est. Et de uento illo splen hominis inpinguescit, et inepta letitia et risus atque cahinni in homine excutiuntur.” For more on this passage, see Olga V. Trokimento, Constructing Virtue and Vice: Femininity and Laughter in Courtly Society (ca. 1150– 1300) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 82–83. 68. “Inde est quod ad communem hominum conuersationem ab illa interni concentus melodia regrediens, dulces in uocum etiam sono modos, quos in spirituali armonia discit et retinet, memor Dei, et in reliquiis cogitationum huiusmodi diem festum agens, sepius resultando delectatur, eosdem que modulos, communi humane musice instrumento gratiores, prosis ad laudem Dei et sanctorum honorem compositis, in ecclesia publice decantari facit.” As found in Guibert of Gembloux, Epistolae, no. XVIII, 231; cf. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 2, no. 104, p. 30. 69. This understanding is borrowed from my “Angels and Ideas.” See also the more frequently cited passage in Epistolae, no. II, fol. 103r, 261–62/ The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 2, no. 103r, p. 23: “What­ever I see or learn in this vision I retain for a long time, and store it away in my memory.” 70. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, trans. Baird and Ehrman, vol. 1, no. 40, p. 110: “It is reported that, exalted, you see many ­t hings in the heavens and rec­ord them in your writing, and that you bring forth the melody of a new song (atque modos noui carminis edas).”

Appendix 3 1. On this feast, see Susan Rankin, “Terribilis est locus iste: The Pantheon in 609,” in Rhe­toric Beyond Words, ed. Mary Carruthers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 281–310.

BIBLIOGR APHY

Manuscripts Aix-­en-­Provence, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 25 Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Cod. Msc. Bibl. 140 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Lat. Qu. 674 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Theol. Lat. fol. 699 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Theol. Lat. fol. 727 Bonn, Universitäts-­und Landesbibliothek, MS S 292,1 Cologne, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, D 182 Cologne, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, W 278a Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Ny kgl. saml. 90b Fol Dendermonde, St.-­Pieters & Paulusabdij, Abteilbibliothek, MS Cod. 9 (Den) Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 103 Frankfurt am Main, Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, MS Barth. 104 Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92 Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 241 (G) Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Salem X.16 London, British Library, Add. MS 15102 London, British Library, Add. MS 35112 London, British Library, Arundel MS 44 London, British Library, Harley MSS 2803 and 2804 Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS 63 Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 1942 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14399 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 404 New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS 638 New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS 791 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 614 Oxford, St. John’s College, MS 17 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 946 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 12044 Rüdesheim/Eibingen, Benediktinerinnenabtei St. Hildegard, MS 1 (E) Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 390 Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 391 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. hist. 2o 415 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4o 253 (Z) Tournai, Bibliothèque du Séminaire de Tournai, MS 1

324 Bibliography Trier, Seminarbibliothek, MS 68 (T) Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 683 (Cit) Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 311 (V) Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 881 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 963 Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Abt. 23 Nr. 141 Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 1 (W) (original now missing) Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 2 (R) Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 105 Noviss. 2o Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1 Gud. lat.

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Secondary Lit­er­a­ture Allen, M. J. B., and Daniel Calder. Sources and Analogues of Old En­glish Poetry: The Major Latin Sources in Translation. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1976. Allen, Valerie. On Farting: Language and Laughter in the M ­ iddle Ages. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007. Altstatt, Alison. “The Ordo virtutum and Benedictine Monasticism.” In Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 235–56. Arad, Lily. “From Creation to Salvation in the Girona Embroidery.” Miscellània litúrgica catalana 12 (2004): 59–88. Arlt, Wulf. “Nova cantica: Grundsätzliches und Spezielles zur Interpretation musikalischer Texte des Mittelalters.” Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 10 (1986): 13–62. Ashbaugh, A. Freire. Plato’s Theory of Explanation: A Study of the Cosmological Account in the Timaeus. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. Ashley, Scott. “What Did Louis the Pious See in the Night Sky? A New Interpretation of the Astronomer’s Account of Halley’s Comet, 837.” Early Medieval Eu­rope 21 (2013): 27–49. Astell, Ann. “ ‘Memoriam Fecit’: The Eucharist, Memory, Reform, and Regeneration in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias and Nicholas of Cusa’s Sermons.” In Reassessing Reform: A Historical Investigation into Church Renewal, ed. Christopher M. Bellitto and David Zachariah Flanagin, 190–213. Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer­i­ca Press, 2012. Baert, Barbara. “New Observations on the Genesis of Girona (1050–1100): The Iconography of the Legend of the True Cross.” Gesta 38 (1999): 115–27. Baillet, Louis. “Les Miniatures du Scivias de Sainte Hildegarde conservé à la bibliothèque de Wiesbaden.” Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot 19/1 (1911): 49–149. Bain, Jennifer. “Hildegard, Hermannus, and Late Chant Style.” Journal of M ­ usic Theory 52 (2008): 123–49. —­—­—. “Hildegard of Bingen, ‘O Jerusalem aurea civitas’ (ca. 1150–1170).” In Analytical Essays on ­Music by ­Women Composers: Secular and Sacred ­Music to 1900, ed. Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, 11–46. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. —­—­—. “History of a Book: Hildegard of Bingen’s ‘Riesencodex’ and World War II.” Plainsong and Medieval ­Music 27 (2018): 143–70. —­—­—. “Hooked on Ecstasy: Per­for­mance Practice and the Reception of the M ­ usic of Hildegard of Bingen.” In The Sounds and Sights of Per­for­mance in Early M ­ usic: Essays in Honour of Timothy J. McGee, ed. Brian Power and Maureen Epp, 253–74. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. —­—­—. “­Music, Liturgy, and Intertextuality in Hildegard of Bingen’s Chant Repertory.” In Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Bain, 209–34. —­—­—­, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

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GENER AL INDEX

Names of modern scholars are not found in the index ­unless they are specifically mentioned in the body of the text itself; other­wise, see the Bibliography. Abel, 134, 160 Abelard, Peter, 35, 130–31 Abraham, 103, 160, 164, 167–69, 184 Adam, first ­human, 69–71, 81, 93, 102–5, 110, 112, 114, 122–27, 144, 160, 164, 167–69, 175, 184, 198, 212, 216, 226, 242, 258–59 Adelard of Bath, 34, 35 Admont, 46 Advent, 188–90, 193–94 Al-­K hwārizmī, 34 alleluia, 76 All Saints, Feast of, 72–86, 201, 243–55, 260; Appendix 3, 265–69 Altstatt, Alison, 44, 74 Amalarius of Metz, 186 Ambrose of Milan, 94 Andronicus of Cyrrhus, 20 angelic hierarchy, 32, 76, 97, 112–13, 116–27, 158–59, 166, 171 Anima, character in the Ordo virtutum, 175, 190, 195, 197–215, 227–30. See also musical analyses, of Ordo virtutum Annunciation, 103 Anselm of Canterbury, 41, 112, 114 Antichrist, 186, 239 Apocalypse, 239–46 Apostles, 175–77, 188, 200–201 Arabic calculation and science, 33, 34, 36 Aratus of Soli, 17, 30 archaeoastronomy, 14–15 Archimedes, 21 Aristotle, Aristotelian, 16–18, 33 Arnstein, 46 Ascension, 148 Ashley, Scott, 31 astrolabe, 33 astrology, 140 Astronomer (court of Louis the Pious), 30–31

Augustine, 21, 24–27, 31, 69, 79, 113, 159, 183, 188–89, 198 Bain, Jennifer, 44, 52, 87–88 baptism, 135, 152, 183, 194, 212, 215 Bartholomew the En­g lishman, 128 ­Battle of Hastings, 31 Beach, Alison, 46 Bede, 29, 30 Bernardus Silvestris, 34, 35, 130 big bang, 14, 111 Bingen, 86 bishops, 91, 174 Boethius, 24–25, 33, 130 Borders, James, 44 bride, bridegroom, 72, 78, 148–52, 155–57; mystical wedding, 77, 151, 195, 207–8 Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Rupertsberg antependium 146–47 Cain, 134, 143 Calcidius 21–22 canon of the Mass, 149–52 Carlevaris, Angela, 53 Caviness, Madeline, 8 chain of thirds 117, 120, 229–30 Charlemagne, 30 Chartres, cathedral, 33, 193; school of, 35 choice between good and evil, 81–83 Christ: as agent of creation, 21, 26, 70, 96, 100–101, 105, 110, 112, 179; as Messiah, 189, 195; on the Cross, 103, 150–52, 155–56, 181–83, 233–38, 246, 253 Christmas, 189 Chrysippus, 18–19 Church (ecclesia), 3, 39, 40, 42, 53, 69, 90, 91, 135, 141, 147–48, 152–57, 164, 175–81, 209, 253 Circumcision, 160, 168–69, 209

346

General Index

City of God, 141, 158–59 Cohen-­Mushlin, Aliza, 46, 102 comets, 30–31 communicants, states of, 153 computus and computistics, 26, 29, 33 consecration, 2, 72, 74, 77, 78, 85, 93 Conrad of Hirsau, 43, 166 Copernicus, 16 Corpus Christi, 185 Corrigan, Vincent, 225, 227, 256 Cosmic Egg, 80, 105, 128–53, 160, 171, 242 creation, 1–2, 8, 14, 15, 18, 21, 25, 26, 100–116 Cross, 148–55, 181, 184, 227–34 ­ aughters of Zion, 91 D Dedication of the Church 90, 154–57 Derolez, Albert, 46, 50, 55, 61 Devil. See Satan diagrams and maps, cosmological, 29 Dionysius Exiguus, 28, 29, 33 Disibodenberg 4, 40, 44, 47, 72–74, 166; Chronicle of, 72 Divine Office, 71–73, 153–54, 185–86, 189, 201 Dronke, Peter 11, 21–22, 35, 53, 130, 159–60 Easter, date of, 26, 28, 29 Eastwood, Bruce, 29 ecotheology, 16 Edifice of Salvation (Scivias III.iii–­x), 158–68, 190; Plate XI; individual stations: Jealousy of God, 167, 171–72; Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior, 175, 181, 190–96; Pillar of the Word of God, 168–69, 188; Son of Man, 181–84; Tower of the Anticipation of God’s W ­ ill, 162, 168–69, 175–76; Tower of the Church, 167, 169, 175–81. See also Scivias, paintings Einstein, Albert 16 Embach, Michael, 46 Enoch and Elijah, 240 Eriugena, John Scottus, 31–32, 130 Eucharist (and communion), 134, 147–54, 162, 212, 225, 227, 233–37, 240, 242, 253 Euclid, 33 Eudoxos of Cnidus, 16–17, 30 Evangelists, 201 Eve, 102, 108, 114, 126–27, 144, 190, 198, 212, 222, 257 Fall, of h ­ umans, 1, 42, 71–72, 105, 110, 114–15, 122–27, 188, 198, 216, 226, 242, 247. See also Satan, fall of Flood, 159

Flynn, William, 44 fountain, 194 Frankendal, 46 Führkötter, Adelgundis, 46, 49, 53 gems, 177 Gerard of Cremona, 34 Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II), 33 Gero, Abbot of Salem, 68 Girona embroidery, 133 golden number, 78, 235–36, 238–39, 242, 244, 254. See also “In principio” in list of individual chants Gregory of Tours, 27 Gregory the ­Great, Pope, 40, 64, 67, 69, 112–14, 116, 148, 198 Grosseteste, Robert, 278 n.5 Guibert of Gembloux, 3–4, 47–48, 259 Hamburger, Jeffrey, 9, 46, 94 Hamersleben, 46 Heinzer, Felix, 74 Hell, 103, 114, 126–27, 142–47 Hermann of Carinthia, 35 Hermannus of Reichenau, 33 Herrad of Hohenberg, 17 hexameron, 25, 40, 100–105, 114, 116, 123, 131, 159 Hicks, Andrew 16, 22 Hildegard of Bingen, as magistra, 187, 190–92, 198–99, 231; as prophet, 38, 69–72, 100, 163, 197, 207, 216–19; chant texts, formation, dating, general meanings 3–8, 45, 152–55, 163, 246–57; consecration of, 72–74, 77, 154; visions (generally), 10, 38, 67–69, 72–73, 80–86, 93, 157; individual works: Cause et Cure, 10–12, 24, 36, 70, 72, 111; Commentary on the Rule, 72–73; Exhortatio virtutum, 4, 164, 184, 192, 196, 198; Homilies, 32–33; Letters, 36, 45–49, 70, 153–54, 156–57, 163; Liber divinorum operum, 7, 9, 10, 19–20, 35, 47, 50, 62, 79, 130, 140, 142, 225, 234, 239; Liber vite meritorum, 7, 11, 47, 50, 62; Lingua ignota, 47, 147, 155–56; Miscellany (so called), 7, 155; Physica, 10–12, 36; Vita Ruperti, 86. See also Scivias, individual visions; Scivias, individual paintings; Ordo virtutum; musical analyses (both more generally and of the Ordo virtutum); Anima; laments in the Ordo virtutum; index of individual chants Hildesheim, 102 Hirsau, use of, 44, 47, 74, 166 Holy Spirit, 87, 89, 91, 164, 171, 177, 183, 208



General Index 347

Honorius Augustodunensis, 32, 35, 36, 41, 43, 74, 113, 114, 128, 140, 142, 159, 197 Hugh of St. Victor, 35–36, 41–43, 80, 111, 159, 189 Incarnation, Incarnational, 105, 127, 144, 158, 167, 169, 175–76, 178, 184, 189–90, 192–95, 198, 208, 215, 218–19, 249–50, 254 Isaac, 103, 168 Isidore of Seville, 26–27, 30, 128, 166 Jacob, 103 Jacob’s ladder, 84 Jara, Christian, 8 Jerusalem, 80, 86, 137, 159, 164, 183, 223, 237 Jesse, 192–3. See also Stirps Jesse Jews and anti-­Jewishness, 189 John the Baptist, 189, 193, 245–46, 250 John the Deacon, 67 John the Evangelist, 193 Joyner, Danielle, 17 Judgment, 81, 158, 240 Jutta of Sponheim, 4, 62, 69, 72; Vita of Jutta, 72 Keen, Elizabeth, 128 Kelly, David H., 14 Klaper, Michael, 87–88 Kobialka, Michal, 186–87 Kruckenberg, Lori, 44 Lactantius, 20–21 ladder, 175–77, 195 Laird, Edgar, 18 laments in the Ordo virtutum, 188, 197, 203–7, 225. See also musical analyses, of Ordo virtutum. Leigh-­Choate, Tova, 73 Liber Floridus, 133, 137, 160 Liturgy, liturgical, and the cosmos, 8, 24, 28, 30, 32, 40, 72, 150–53, 257–60; basic to Hildegard’s work as a theologian, 12, 16, 27, 32, 72, 90, 98, 197–99, 201, 224, 233, 246–51; of All Saints, 72–86, 201, 243–55, 260; of the Ordo virtutum, 185–90, 227–30, 234–36; in Hildegard’s community, 45, 73, 153–57, 234–37. See also Eucharist; individual chants; musical analy­sis Living Light, 67–69, 81, 100, 113, 130, 151, 174, 259–60 Louis the Pious, 30 Lucan, 19 Lucifer. See Satan Macrobius, 22, 71 Mainz, 166; globe of, 17

Manilius, 19 Martianus Capella, 17, 130 martyrs, 238–39, 245–46, 252 Mass, 185–86. See also Eucharist memory, 23, 25, 73 Michael the Archangel, 123–26 Milo, 130–31 Milone, Eugene F., 14 mode, maneria 88, 99, 107, 196–97, 201, 216–19, 225–26, 254 Moffit, John F., 137 monochord, 71 Moon, 17,18, 21, 26, 27, 28, 32, 71, 135, 137, 141, 148–49, 152, 154–55, 249 Morent, Stefan, 87 Moses, 160, 164, 168, 184 Moulinier, Laurence, 11 ­music of the spheres, 22, 31–32, 71 ­music theory, 24, 25, 99, 196–97 musical analyses, 97–100, 107–10, 116–22, 178–81, 187, 196–202, 231–32, 259–60. See also individual chants by title; of Ordo virtutum: Section I, 196–97, 199–203; Interlude, 204–7; Section II and III, 208–10; Section IV, 210–12; Interlude (“O uiuens fons”), 213–15; Section V, 215–20; Interlude (Victory) and Section VI, 221–223; of Scivias chants, 249–54 Newman, Barbara, 7–8, 73, 87 Nisula, Timo, 198 Noah, 160, 164, 168, 184 Norton, Michael, 186–87 Notker Balbulus, 76 number symbolism, 160 Obrist, Barbara, 35, 131, 142 Odo of Cluny, 130 Odo of Soissons, 94, 259 ordo prophetarum,188–89, 193, and Ordo virtutum, 188 Ordo representacionis Ade, 189 Ordo virtutum, 4, 23, 36, 40, 74, 79, 85, 91, 141, 144, 146–47, 161, 163, 164, 166, 171, 175, 181, 245, 247; general meanings, 187–96; Section I, 196–203; Interlude: “O plangens uox,” 203–7; Sections II and III, 203–10; Section IV and the Interlude “O uiuens fons,” 210–15; Section V, 215–20; Interlude and Section VI, 221–23, 225–39. See also Anima; laments in the Ordo Virtutum; musical analyses; index of chants; Satan, speeches of

348

General Index

Pantheon, 78. See also prophecy in ­music patriarchs and prophets, 177, 188–190, 193, 195, 197, 200–1, 246, 250 penance, penitent 152–53, 165, 183, 235, 238, 247 Pérès, Marcel, 107 Petersen, Nils Holger, 187 Pfau, Marianne Richert, 87 planets, 135, 136, 140–42, 171 Plato, Platonic, Platonism, Neoplatonism 16–22, 25, 26, 33; Timaeus, 21–22, 31 Pliny the Elder, 20–21, 30 Poirel, Dominique, 111 praise, 113, 148, 152–53, 171, 242, 257 preaching, 171 prophecy in ­music, 208–9 Prudentius, 165–66 Ptolemy, 20 Pythagoras, 22 Quodvultdeus, “Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arianos,” 188–89 Rabanus Maurus, 128, 166 reason, 25, 113 redemption, redeemed, 247 Reichenau, 133 Remigius of Auxerre, 130 Rothchild Canticles, 94–96 Rubenstein, Jay 160 Rudolph, Conrad, 159 Rule of St. Benedict, 64, 72, 81, 83, 84, 86, 165, 190–92, 194 Rupert of Deutz, 35, 130 Rupert, saint, 4, 7, 86–91, 97, 146, 154, 198 Rupertsberg, 9, 10, 44, 45, 52, 74, 131, 157, 161, 166, 190, 248; ­later magistra, 146; scriptorium, 45–63, 73, 123, 147, 196. See also antependium of, Brussels; Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire; liturgy; individual chants; Ordo virtutum sacraments, sacramental, 131, 135, 147–48, 161, 163, 187. See also baptism; Eucharist; saints; common of saints, 244–54; named individual saints Salem, 63 Satan (Devil, Diabolus), 110, 112, 134, 141–48, 161, 194, 197–98, 207–8, 220, 222; fall of, 105, 110, 112–14, 116–27, 152–55, 158–59, 174, 187, 190, 192, 195, 198–99, 242, 258; speeches of in the Ordo virtutum, 199–200, 208, 215, 222, 224 Schedel, Hartmann, 18

Schrader, Marianna, 46, 49 Scivias, dates and copying on the Rupertsberg, 38, 50–63; chant texts, 105, 246–54; structure, 38–42; as liturgical commentary, 45, 80–86; as context for the play and chants, 45; individual visions: Preface (or Protestification), 64–71, 73, 81; Book I.i, 80–86, 91, 234; Book I.ii, 112, 114; Book I.iii, 105, 128–53, 152, 163, 171; Book II.i, 100–5, 114, 123, 144; Book II.ii, 100–2; Book II.v, 157; Book II.vi, 147–53, 155, 162, 225, 234, 240; Book II.vii, 143–47; Book III.i, 105, 114, 116, 158–59, 237; Book III. ii, 113, 159, 237, 239; Book III.iii, 168–69, 190, 208–10; Book III.iv, 169–71, 188; Book III.v, 171–72, 188; Book III.vi, 172–74; Book III.vii, 174–75; Book III.viii, 190–96, 213, 237; Book III.ix, 175–77; Book III.x, 181–84, 209, 239–40;Book III.xi, 240; Book III.xii, 240; Book III.xiii, 196, 224–25, 245–54. See also Scivias, individual paintings; Edifice of Salvation (Book III, ii–­x), individual stations Scivias, paintings, 162–63; paintings and embroidery, 146–47; individual paintings (in order by folio in W and E), portrait with Volmar (fol. 1r), 62–68, 81, 110; One Enthroned (fol. 2r), 79–91, 138; the Fall (of ­humans) (fol. 4r) 114–15, 126–27; Cosmic Egg (fol. 14r), 128; Creation and Redemption (fol. 41v), 100–105, 123; The Trinity (fol. 47r), 94; Communion and altar (fols. 86r and v), 148–53; Satan (fol. 115v), 144–47; the Fall (of Satan and his minions) (fol. 123r), 116–22; the Edifice of Salvation (fol. 130v), Plate XI, 160–65, 239; Pillar of the Word of God (fol. 145v), fig. 6.1, 169–71; Knowledge of God (fol. 146r), fig. 6.2, 171; Jealousy of God (fol. 153r), 171–72; The ­Triple Wall (fol. 161v), fig. 6.3, 172–74; Pillar of the Trinity (fol. 171r), 174–75; Pillar of the Humanity of the Savior, (fol. 178r), plate XIII, 192, 195; Tower of the Church (fol. 192r), fig. 6.4, 175–77; Son of Man (fol. 203v), 239–40, fig. 6.5 and Plate XV, 181–84; End of Time (fol. 225r), fig. 8.1 and Plate XVI; Symphony of the Blessed (fol. 229r), Plate XIV, 243–46 sedes sapientiae, 195 sequence, 76, 86–88, 90, 198 Sequentia, 206 Shepherd of Hermas, 40, 165–67 Siegfried von Eppstein II, archbishop of Mainz, 146 simony, 176



General Index 349

sin, stages of, 198 singing in community 153–55 Solomon, 159 Speculum virginum, 43, 166, 192 Sponheim, 74, 189 Stirps Jesse, 190–93, 195, 207–8, 248, 254–55 Sulpicius Severus, 29 Sun, 249 supernova, 31 T–­O map, 137 Tauler, Johannes, 9 Tengswich, 156 Thierry of Chartres, 35 time, 25–28, 40, 71, 80, 114, 156, 158–61, 190, 194, 198, 225, 237, 239, 240, 246, 258 Trier, 7 Trinity, 21, 26, 72, 78, 93–101,123, 140, 152, 160–61, 172, 174–75, 178, 190 University of Notre Dame, planetarium 10 Ursula, saint, 7, 107, 252 Van Engen, John, 48 Venantius Fortunatus, 155 vices, 144 viriditas, 90, 209, 216, 227–28, 233, 254 Virgin Mary, Marian, Mariological, 7, 42, 78, 97, 100, 105, 127, 144, 192–93, 195, 198, 215–16, 222–25, 244–45, 247, 249, 254 virginity, virgins, 91, 153–57, 165, 183, 194–95, 223, 246, 248, 252, 253–54, 258 virtues, 18, 24, 42–43, 75, 83, 85, 105, 110, 144, 152, 158, 160–62, 164, 166–68, 175, 184, 188,

190, 194, 197–99, 215, 224–25, 237; individual virtues, in alpha order: Abstinence, 172; Beatitude, 174; Celestial love, 168–69, 183; Charity, 88, 91, 192, 194; Chastity, 190, 192, 194, 207–8, 213, 222–23; Compunction, 174, 183; Concord, 183; Constancy, 183; Contempt of the world, 183, 209; Discipline, 168–69; Discretion, 174; Faith, 167, 183, 192; Fear of the Lord, 83–85, 88, 91, 167, 174, 183, 192; Fortitude, 175, 193; Hope, 192; Humility, 84, 192, 194, 198, 215, 237, 245; Innocence, 207, 213; Justice, 171, 174–75; Knowledge of God, 171–72, 188–93, 198; Liberality, 172; Mercy, 153, 168–69; Modesty, 168–69; Obedience, 192; Patience, 220; Peace, 174; Piety, 174; Poor in spirit, 84–85; Salvation, 174; Sanctity, 175; Truth, 174; Victory, 168–69, 190, 192, 207, 220, 221; Wisdom, 175–81, 193 Vision, directed by Margarethe von Trotta, 62 voice, 187–88, 190, 199 Volmar, 11, 41, 45, 48, 51–63, 64, 67, 187 von Winterfeld, Dethard, 161 Warntjes, Immo, 29 Wetherbee, Winthrop, 34 William of Conches, 35, 111, 130, 142 William of Hirsau, 33 William of Malmesbury, 31 winds 19, 35, 131–35, 140–41, 147, 240–42 Yingst, Daniel, 41 zodiac, 19–20, 22, 140 Zwiefalten, 47, 68

INDEX OF CHANTS AND CHANT TEXTS FROM THE LITURGY, SYMPHONIA AND THE ORDO VIRTUTUM

“Aue regina celorum,” 216–21 “Christe redemptor,” 265 “Ego omnes uias meas” (OV), 215 “Ego uictoria” (OV), 220 “Felix namque es,” 244 “Heu, heu (OV),” 226 “Hodie aperuit,” 255–56 “In principio (OV),” 78–79, 207, 225, 227–42 “Isti sunt viri,” 244, 246 “Laus tibi Christi” (OV), 222 “Laus trinitati,” 97–101, 107, 117 “Nunc gaudeant,” 155 “O choruscans lux stellarum,” 156 “O cohors militia,” 252 “O Deus quis es tu” (OV), 223 “O Fili dilectissimi,” 258 “O eterne deus,” 231–33 “O how glorious is that kingdom,” 154 “O gloriosissimi,” 112, 116–122, 143, 249–50

“O Ierusalem aurea ciuitas,” 86–91, 97, 154, 198, 223 “O lucidissima apostolorum,” 252 “O nobilissima uiriditas,” 216–19, 254 “O nos peregrine (OV),” 225–26 “O orzchis ecclesia,” 155–56 “O pater omnium,” 76 “O plangens uox” (OV), 203–7, 214, 226 “O spectabiles uiri,” 250 “O splendidissima gemma,” 105–10, 117, 249 “O tu suauissima uirgo,” 247 “O uos imitatores,” 4, 6 “O uos regales (OV),” 226 “O uerbum patris,” 96 “O uirgo ecclesia,” 155 “O uirtus sapientie,” 178–81, 197 “O uis eternitatis,” 164 “O uivens fons” (OV), 194, 209, 212–15 “Omnes sancti seraphim,” 76 “Qui sunt isti,” 200–201, 246, 252 “Sint lumbi vestri,” 244 “Vexilla regis,” 155 “Vos flores rosarum,” 252–53

INDEX OF SCRIPTUR E

See also Appendix 3, Feast of All Saints Ephesians 5:27, 156 Ezechiel, 69, 79, 159 Ezra, 78, 236

Matthew, Gospel of, 83; Sermon on the Mount, 5: 1–16, 75, 81, 84–85, 92, 244; Last Supper, 26:26–29, 152

Genesis, 198; individual books; Gen: 1–2, 25, 27–28, 97, 100, 102–5, 110, 111, 123, 207; Gen: 3, 144, 222; Gen: 28, 84

Psalms, 257; Ps. 7, 83; Ps. 33, 83; Ps. 35, 83; Ps. 41, 183; Ps. 60, 84; Ps. 94, 83; Ps. 113, 27; Ps. 138, 83; Ps. 143, 193; Ps. 148, 40; Ps. 149, 40; Ps. 150, 40; Ps. 148–50, 224, 257

Isaiah, 79, 81, 103, 193, 195, 201, 208 1 John, 175 John, Gospel of, 69

Revelation (Apocalypse), 69, 77, 83, 91, 123–24, 154–57, 201, 209, 242–43 Romans, 83

Luke, Gospel of, 15, 237

Second Thessalonians, 238 Song of Songs, 90, 152, 195

Mark, Gospel of, 90

1 Timothy. 2:9, 156

INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS

Aix-­en-­Provence, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 25, 137 Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MS 73, 136, 140 Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Bamberg, Cod. Msc. Bibl. 140, 133 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Lat. Qu. 674, 11 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Cod. Theol. Lat. fol. 699, 48 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS Theol. lat. fol. 727, 50 Cleveland Museum of Art, MS 1949.202, 193, Plate XII Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Ny kgl. saml. 90b Fol, 11 Dendermonde, St.-­Pieters & Paulusabdij, Abteilbibliothek, MS Cod. 9 (D), 4, 50, 100, 155, 234 Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 103, 44, 73, 77, 79, 189, 201, 216 Ghent, Universiteit Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 92, 131–33 Ghent, Universiteit Ghent, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS 241, 50 Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Salem X.16, 63, 65–66, 122–27 London, British Library, Harley MS 2803, 102 Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS 63, 102 Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 1942, 63

New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS 638, 122 New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS 791, 122 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 614, 131 Paris, National Library, lat. MS 946, 74 Paris, National Library, lat. 12044, 116 Rüdesheim/Eibingen, Benediktinerinnenabtei St. Hildegard, MS 1, 52–53 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. hist. 2° 415, 123–25 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. theol. phil. 4° 253, 4–7, 48–49 Tournai, Bibliothèque du Séminaire, MS 1, 102 Trier, Seminarbibliothek, MS 68, 50 Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 683, 50 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. Lat. 311, 50 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 881, 48 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 963, 48 Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 1 (W), 8, 10, 38, 46, 50–63, 64–68, 146, 155, 239. See also Scivias, individual visions, and individual paintings Wiesbaden, Hochschul-­und Landesbibliothek RheinMain, MS 2 (R), 4, 11, 50, 53, 155, 234, 239 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 105 Noviss. 2°, 103

ACKNOWL ­E DGMENTS

It all started in 1996. Barbara Newman was editing a new volume of essays on Hildegard of Bingen, one for each discipline. Barbara told me about the collection and then said, “and you ­will write the essay on ­music.” “No,” I said, “I ­don’t work on Hildegard.” And she replied: “You do now.” Fourteen essays, a digital model, and now a monograph ­later, her prophetic words still make both of us smile. I confess that I have never grown tired of the topic; ­t here is always more to learn, and the many strands of interdisciplinary effort that inform Hildegard’s theological work still astound me. I am deeply grateful for the support of the community at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen, above all to my dear friends ­Mother Abbess Dorothea Flandera, OSB and Sr. Philippa Rath, OSB. The permission to publish plates and figures from their copy made by the s­ isters in the 1920s and 1930s of the illuminated Scivias, and the black-­and-­white photos of the original, now-­missing codex, made it pos­si­ble for me to write this book. Hans-­Georg Kunz made the positive copies of the photos. The long years of work have been sustained by the University of Notre Dame, the College of Arts and Letters, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, by the enthusiasm and insights of my students both at Yale and at Notre Dame, and by fellowships from the Luce Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Theological Inquiry, and the American Council of Learned Socie­ties. I was able to finish the responses to readers’ reports and expand the book while on fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, working on another proj­ect with my colleague Susan Rankin of Cambridge University. To contract with Bonnie Blackburn to copy edit the final manuscript was one of the best decisions I made in regard to this book. My husband, Peter Jeffery, has listened to daily news about the latest Hildegard ideas for de­cades, and his caring patience and his insights are deeply appreciated. Francis Fassler Jeffery, Joe Fassler, Rachel Fagnant-­ Fassler, Ella Fassler, Susan Fassler, Deb Kahkejian, Barbara Danzi, and Cary Fassler have listened too. Thank you. The book is dedicated to my godson François Pacha Miran and to my grand­son, Luke Peter Anthony Fagnant Fassler, our hopes for the f­ uture.

358

Acknowl­edgments

Many p ­ eople must be thanked ­here for a variety of kinds of support from seminars and vari­ous conversations all the way to reading parts of the manuscript at one stage or another. I mention them in alphabetical order: Alison Altstatt, Cara Aspesi, Kim Belcher, Camille Bennett, Meg Bent, Teresa Berger, Ranier Berndt, Bonnie Blackburn, Calvin Bower, Susan Boynton, Katie Bugyis, Eleonora Celora, Tova Leigh Choate, Giles Constable (+), Keith Davis, Lisa Fagin Davis, Anna de Bakker, Dan DiCenso, Hugh Feiss, OSB, William Flynn, David Ganz, Nina Glibetic, David Gura, Barbara Haagh-­Huglo, Jeffery Hamburger, Peter Hawkins, Peter Holland, Olivia Holmes, Gunilla Iversen, Chris Jara, Peter Jeffery, Robin Jensen, Jim John, Max Johnson, Claire Taylor Jones, Kathryn Kerby-­Fulton, Deeana Klepper, Kristie Kummerer, Rob Lagueux, Jen Lovejoy, Anne MacNeil, Martin Maier, Rebecca Maloy, Caleb Maskell, Tim Matovina, Honey Meconi, Diana Meyers, François Miran, Hildegund Müller, Iris Mueller, Barbara Newman, Brian Noell, Maryellen O’Connell, Henry Parkes, Nils Holger Petersen, Gabriel Radle, Don Randel, Susan Rankin, Martina Saltamacchia, Eva Schlotheuber, Julia Schneider, Michael Schreffler, Braxton Shelley, Samantha Slaubaugh, Bryan Spinks, Kate Kennedy Steiner, John Van Engen, Mary Wack, Fr. Jerome F. Weber, Charlie Wright, Craig Wright, Lindsay Wright, Anne Yardley and Maura Zatoni, OSB. I am grateful for the Medieval Study Group at the North American Acad­emy of Liturgy, for the Medieval Liturgy Working Group, sponsored by Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, for Margaret Bent’s seminar at Oxford University, for the Musicology group at Kalamazoo, for the American Musicological Society, for the ­Music Department at Prince­ton University, for the Yale Institute of Sacred ­Music and the Yale Department of ­Music, for my colleagues at Sacred M ­ usic at Notre Dame, and in Notre Dame’s Department of Theology and of M ­ usic, for my “cohort” at the Radcliffe Institute, and especially for the members of the Virtual Symposium on the Latin Liturgy. A special shout-­out ­here to Jerry Singerman, editor par excellence, whose expertise and wisdom have made so many excellent books in so many fields a real­ity. I am honored to be a member of his flock. Thanks to Ruth Karras, who has edited the series in masterful ways, to Jenny Tan, who has been most helpful as the pro­ cess has drawn at last to conclusion, and for the skillful work of Noreen O’Connor-­ Abel also at the Press. To the many libraries and librarians who have allowed access to manuscripts and other materials and given permissions for publication, which are acknowledged in the captions for plates and figures, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude. Their generosity with time and materials is boundless, and without it this work could not have been done.