Hildegardis Bingensis, Epistolarium pars tertia CCLI-CCCXC

edited by L. Van Acker and M. Klaes-Hachmoller, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis XCIB (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), xxxi 352 pp. ISBN 2-503-03916-2. Eur. 158.00 (hard covers); Eur. 145.00 (p/b).

The first volume of the letters of Hildegard of Bingen (letters I-XC), edited by Lieven Van Acker, was published as Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis vol. XCI in 1991, and unleashed a tierce dispute about fundamental editorial principles. K. Bund put forward the view that to edit the letters as individual documents, arranged systematically by addressee, was to falsify the true nature of the Epistolarium by breaking up the structures documented in the manuscripts. 1993 saw the publication of the second volume with letters XCI-CCLR (where an exchange of letters has been preserved the `reply' is marked with an R). After Van Lievens' death in 1994 the completion of the edition was entrusted to Monika Klaes-Hachmoller, whose spectacularly good edition of the Vita Hildegardis made her an obvious choice. She has had to make the best she could of complex editorial principles which, although acceptable to her, do not always make the elaborate textual history of some of the more interesting items as clear as it needs to be.

Two manuscripts contain `early versions' of Hildegard's letters from the period 1154-1170, with no systematic ordering. The Wiesbaden `Riesenkodex' R contains a systematically arranged, augmented collection made in the period 1177-1180, probably by Hildegard's secretary Guibert of Gembloux, whose overall design is clearly intended to present a particular view of Hildegard. She died in 1179 and it is disputed whether she saw (and had control of) the finished product. There are numerous other manuscripts, each with its own profile, which support the view of an authentic corpus of letters augmented and edited to promote a glorified view of this remarkable visionary and prophetess whose correspondents ranged from St Bernard and Pope Eugenius to humble clerks and laypeople. Bund's objection has its foundation in the fact that the different surviving versions of Hildegard's letters reflect an editorial process of which the shaping of the letter collections forms an integral part. The revised editorial principles for this third volume meet the point by separating the variants of the `early' versions and the edited letter-book (R) more clearly than before, by providing an appendix printing the full text of those letters which in the later recension have been fundamentally reworked, and by the provision of tables listing the content of the most important manuscripts in a form that invites the study of their individual profile. Nonetheless it has to be said that to recreate the individual stages of the textual history remains a formidable task for the user, requiring access to arguments and commentary published in a number of articles as well as the materials presented in the edition. It should also be noted that the published translations of the Epistolarium (English by J. L. Baird and R. K. Ehrman, vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 1994; German by Walburga Storch, Pattloch Verlag: Augsburg, 1997, based on Van Acker's draft typescript of the complete corpus), whilst offering excellent and very readable renderings of the text, present the letters as authentic `originals', without reference to their place in the edited letter books.

Textual problems must not be allowed to obscure the significance of the texts edited here. The Epistolarium is a major literary work by one of the foremost Latin writers of the twelfth century. In these stunning texts the perplexing prophetical perspectives adopted in the three great visionary works, of which the Scivias has probably come to be the best known, are presented in relation to a social context, her network of correspondents throughout the Empire, and she emerges as much more individual, multifaceted figure, with friends and enemies, austere and in&pendent, than one would ever believe if one only knew her work from the concert hall.

N.F.P.