Part 6

Her biographer, the monk Theodoric, records that she also busied herself with the treatment of the sick, and credits her with miraculous powers of healing. Some of the cited instances of this faculty, as the curing of a love-sick maid, are, however, but manifestations of personal ascendancy over weaker minds; notwithstanding her undoubted acquaintance with the science of her day, and the claims made for her as a pioneer of the hospital system, there is no serious evidence that her treatment extended beyond exorcism and prayer.

For her time and circumstance Hildegard had seen a fair amount of the world. Living on the Rhine, the highway of Western Germany, she was well placed for observing the traffic and activities of men. She had journeyed at least as far north as Cologne, and had traversed the eastern tributary of the great river to Frankfort on the Main and to Rothenburg on Taube. Her own country, the basin of the Nahe and the Glan, she knew intimately. She was, moreover, in constant communication with Mayence, the seat of the archbishopric in which Bingen was situated, and there has survived an extensive correspondence with the ecclesiastics of Cologne, Speyer, Hildesheim, Trèves, Bamberg, Prague, Nürnberg, Utrecht, and numerous other towns of Germany, the Low Countries, and Central Europe.

Plate II. THE THREE SCRIPTS OF THE WIESBADEN CODEX B]

Hildegard’s journeys, undertaken with the object of stimulating spiritual revival, were of the nature of religious progresses, but, like those of her contemporary, Bernard of Clairvaux, they were in fact largely directed against the heretical and most cruelly persecuted Cathari, an Albigensian sect widely spread in the Rhine country of the twelfth century, whom Hildegard regarded as ‘worse than the Jews’. In justice to her memory it is to be recalled that she herself was ever against the shedding of blood, and had her less ferocious views prevailed, some more substantial relic than the groans and tears of this people had reached our time, while the annals of the Church had been spared the defilement of an inexpiable stain.

Hildegard’s correspondence with St. Bernard, then preaching his crusade, with four popes, Eugenius III, Anastasius IV, Adrian IV, and Alexander III, and with the emperors Conrad and Frederic Barbarossa, brings her into the current of general European history, while she comes into some slight contact with the story of our own country by her hortatory letters to Henry II and to his consort Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII.

To complete a sketch of her literary activities, mention should perhaps be made of a secret script and language, the lingua ignota, attributed to her. It is a transparent and to modern eyes a foolishly empty device that hardly merits the dignity of the term ‘mystical’. It has, however, exercised the ingenuity of several writers, and has been honoured by analysis at the hands of Wilhelm Grimm.

Ample material exists for a full biography of Hildegard, and a number of accounts of her have appeared in the vulgar tongue. Nearly all are marred by a lack of critical judgement that makes their perusal a weary task, and indeed it would need considerable skill to interest a detached reader in the minutiae of monastic disputes that undoubtedly absorbed a considerable part of her activities. Perhaps the best life of her is the earliest; it is certainly neither the least critical nor the most credulous, and is by her contemporaries, the monks Godefrid and Theodoric.

The title of ‘saint’ is usually given to Hildegard, but she was not in fact canonized. Attempts towards that end were made under Gregory IX (1237), Innocent IV (1243), and John XXII (1317). Miraculous cures and other works of wonder were claimed for her, but either they were insufficiently miraculous or insufficiently attested. Those who have impartially traced her life in her documents will agree with the verdict of the Church. Hers was a fiery, a prophetic, in many ways a singularly noble spirit, but she was not a saint in any intelligible sense of the word.

III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

There is no complete edition of the works of Hildegard. For the majority of readers the most convenient collection will doubtless be vol. 197 of Migne, Patrologia Latina. This can be supplemented from Cardinal J. B. Pitra’s well-edited Analecta sacra, the eighth volume of which contains certain otherwise inaccessible works of Hildegard, and is the only available edition of the Liber vitae meritorum per simplicem hominem a vivente luce, revelatorum.

Manuscripts of the writings of our abbess are numerous and are widely scattered over Europe. Four of them are of special importance for our purpose, and are here briefly described.

(A) is a vast parchment of 480 folios in the Nassauische Landesbibliothek at Wiesbaden. This much-thumbed volume, still bearing the chain that once tethered it to some monastic desk, is written in a thirteenth-century script. There is evidence that it was prepared in the neighbourhood of Hildegard’s convent, if not in that convent itself. It is interesting as a collection of those works that the immediate local tradition attributed to her, and is thus useful as a standard of genuineness. Reference will be made to it in the following pages as the Wiesbaden Codex A. Its contents are as follows:

1. Liber Scivias.

2. Liber vitae meritorum.

3. Liber divinorum operum.

4. Ad praelatos moguntienses.

5. Vita sanctae Hildegardis. By Godefrid and Theodoric.

6. Liber epistolarum et orationum. This collection contains 292 items, and includes the Explanatio symboli Athanasii, the Exposition of the Rule of St. Benedict, and the Lives of St. Disibode and St. Rupert.

7. Expositiones evangeliorum.

8. Ignota lingua and Ignotae litterae.

9. Litterae villarenses.

10. Symphonia harmoniae celestum revelationum.

(B) is also at Wiesbaden, and will be cited here as the Wiesbaden Codex B. It contains the Scivias only, and is a truly noble volume of 235 folios, beautifully illuminated, in excellent preservation, and of the highest value for the history of mediaeval art. It has been thoroughly investigated by the late Dom Louis Baillet, who concluded that it was written in or near Bingen between the dates 1160 and 1180. Its miniatures help greatly in the interpretation of the visions, illustrating them often in the minutest and most unexpected details. In view of the great difficulty of visualizing much of her narrative, these miniatures afford to our mind strong evidence that the MS. was supervised by the prophetess herself, or was at least prepared under her immediate tradition. This view is confirmed by comparing the miniatures with those of the somewhat similar but inferior Heidelberg MS. (C).

Both the miniatures and the script of the Wiesbaden Codex B are the work of several hands. There are three distinct handwritings discernible (Plate II). The earliest is attributed by Baillet in his careful work to the twelfth century, while the later writing is in thirteenth-century hands. It thus appears to us that while Hildegard herself probably supervised the earlier stages of the preparation of this volume, its completion took place subsequent to her death. This view is sustained by the fact that some of the later miniatures are far less successful than the earlier figures in aiding the interpretation of her text.

The two Wiesbaden MSS. appear to have remained at the convent on the Rupertsberg opposite Bingen until the seventeenth century. They were studied there by Trithemius in the fifteenth century, and one of them at least was seen by the Mayence Commission of 1489. Later they were noted by the theologians Osiander (1527) and Wicelius (Weitzel, 1554), and by the antiquary Nicolaus Serarius (1604). In 1632, during the Thirty Years’ War, the Rupertsberg buildings were destroyed, the MSS. being removed to a place of safety in the neighbouring settlement at Eibingen, where they were again recorded in 1660 by the Jesuits Papenbroch and Henschen. At some unknown date they were transferred to Wiesbaden, where they were examined in 1814 by Goethe, and a few years later by Wilhelm Grimm, and where they have since remained.

Slightly simplified from the Wiesbaden Codex B, folio 14 r.]

(C) This MS. is at the University Library at Heidelberg. It also contains only the Scivias, and it is the only known illuminated MS. of that work except the Wiesbaden Codex B. The Heidelberg MS. was prepared with great care in the early thirteenth century, only a little later than its fellow, but its figures afford little aid in the interpretation of the text. Thus, for instance, the Heidelberg diagram of the universe (Plate IV) is of a fairly conventional type which quite fails to illustrate the difficult description. The obscurities of the text are, however, at once explained by a figure in the Wiesbaden Codex B (Fig. 2): we thus obtain further indirect evidence of the personal influence of Hildegard in the preparation of that MS. The representation of Hildegard in the Heidelberg MS. (Plate III) shows no resemblance to those in the Wiesbaden Codex B (Plate I) or in the Lucca MS. (Plates VI to IX), which will now be described.

(D) is an illustrated codex of the Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis at the Municipal Library at Lucca. It contains ten beautiful miniatures, some of which are here reproduced (Plates VI to IX and XI), as they are of special value for the interpretation of Hildegard’s theories on the relation of macrocosm and microcosm.