Life and Context: Hildegard was a Benedictine abbess of the twelfth century Rhineland, a visionary prophet, theologian, preacher, musical composer, dramatist, healer, and researcher in natural science and medicine. She received visions at a very young age, and while still a child she was placed by her parents in the care of a young woman committed to religious life named Jutta von Sponheim. They took up an anchorite life, attached to the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. Jutta taught Hildegard to sing the divine office and the basics of Latin. They soon attracted others and became the center of a growing group of Benedictine nuns. When Jutta died in 1136, Hildegard was elected leader (magistra) of the nuns. In spite of opposition from Abbott Kuno, she succeeded in setting up an independent womenâs monastery at Rupertsberg in 1150, and then founding a second monastery at Eibingen in 1165. She had the support of Volmar, a monk of Disibodenberg, a spiritual advisor and friend who also served as her scribe. Hildegard was reluctant to share her visionary experience, but she says that in a vision in 1141, when she was 42, she was told by God to write down what she saw and heard. In the light of the divine instruction, she eventually wrote three major texts of visionary theology, the Scivias, between 1142 and 1151, The Book of Lifeâs Merits, between 1158 and 1163, and The Book of Divine Works, between 1163 and 1174. She was confirmed in her visionary and prophetic vocation by Bernard of Clairvaux and by Pope Eugenius III, who read from part of her Scivias at the Synod of Trier in 1147.
Hildegard experienced visions of light, and a voice from heaven, which she called the voice of the Living Light. She tells of a vision of extraordinary brilliance in which she was given an immediate grasp of the meaning of the Scriptures. Sometimes there were complex visions, with radiantly beautiful figures, mountains, buildings, and strange animals. Hildegard insists that her visions are not experiences of the senses, and not the result of ecstasy, and that she sees them only in her spirit, when she is wide awake, and with her eyes open. Her three major works offer theological interpretations of such visions.
In the Scivias, for example, Hildegard describes twenty-six visions and provides a theological interpretation of each of them. Her manuscript is illustrated with thirty-five brilliant illuminations, probably created in Hildegardâs community under her supervision. The theological interpretation of each vision, she insists, comes not from her, but from the Living Light. The title Scivias seems to be a contraction of the Latin for âknow the waysâ of God (Scito vias Domini). The ways of God she describes in this book cover a vast scope from the creation of angels and of the world, and the fall of Lucifer and Adam, to the incarnation, the church, the virtues, and to the end of the world, with the persecutions of the anti-Christ and the Last Judgment. The Scivias concludes with an expression of the celestial harmony of life in God, with hymns to Mary, and to the angels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Hildegardâs medieval world is very distant from ours. Some of her images can seem alien, at least until one spends time with them. Some of her theological assumptions differ radically from those of many twenty-first century Christians, such as her vivid views of demons, her presumption that those beyond the church will be lost, her enthusiastic prioritizing of virginity and of monastic life in general, and her apocalyptic scenarios of the end of the world. While in such matters she was the product of her own religious culture, her major theological insights are deeply grounded in the Christian tradition, and her theology is radically incarnational and Trinitarian. Barbara Newman points out that in spite of the âoutlandishâ images found in Hildegardâs Scivias, it is not far removed in substance from Hugh of St Victorâs major theological work, On the Sacraments of Christian Faith, written only a decade or two earlier. Hildegardâs three major books constitute one of the great theological achievements of the twelfth century.
Hildegardâs theology is not only traditional, but also highly original and fresh in its insights and expression, with a capacity to leap the centuries. There is a vividness and immediacy to her ideas, her images and her language that can be startling, challenging, and enriching. I will begin by exploring her view of creation, incarnation and the Trinity in the Scivias. Then I will take up her discussion of Divine Wisdom (Sapientia) and Divine Love (Caritas), from The Book of Divine Works. In the third section I will explore her concept of greenness, and in the fourth her view of human beings in relation to the wider creation. The chapter will conclude with a brief discussion of her view of music.
Creation, Incarnation, and Trinity
In the Scivias, as in all of Hildegardâs works, the Word in whom all things are created is the Word made flesh. She moves quickly back and forth between creation and incarnation, and sees the incarnation as from the beginning the eternal counsel, or plan, of God, drawing on the text: âThe counsel of the Lord stands foreverâ (Ps 33:11). She writes, at the beginning of book 3 of the Scivias: âGrant me to make known the divine counsel, which was ordained of old, as I can and should: how you willed your Son to become incarnate and become a human being within time; which you willed before all creation in your rectitude and the fire of the Dove, the Holy Spirit.â
In the second book of the Scivias, Hildegard describes a vision of the creation and redemption, as a blazing fire, with a sky-colored flame at its center. The blazing fire, she tells us, represents the omnipotent God, a God who is âwholly livingâ and âwholly life,â from whom everything that lives takes its life. All creatures exist from, and are sustained by, this blazing fire of the Creator: âthe sky holds light, light air, and air the birds; the earth nourishes plants, plants fruit and animals; which all testify that they were put there by a strong hand, the supreme power of the Ruler of All, who in his strength has so provided for them all that nothing is lacking to them for their use.â
The sky-colored flame at the center of the blazing fire, Hildegard explains, is the infinite Word of God. The Word is as inseparable from the blazing fire as the viscera are from the human being. In âthe ardor of charityâ the Word that is indivisibly in the Father becomes incarnate âby the Holy Spiritâs sweet freshness (per viriditatem suavitatis) in the dawn of blessed virginity.â It is typical of Hildegard to see the incarnation as expressing the ardor of divine love, to speak of the sweet freshness or greenness of the Spirit, and to exult in the Spiritâs wor...
