Hildegard of Bingen: An Integrated Vision

Spiritual Life, Spring 2003 by Oncay, Barbara S

Hildegard oF Bingen: An In, iree Vision. By Anne H. King-Lenzmeier. The Liturgical Press: P.O. Box 7500, Collegeville, MN 56321, 2001. Pp. 231. Paper. $29.95.

Hildegard of Bingen-a twelfth-century Benedictine nun, theologian, musician, correspondent, and herbalist-is enjoying renewed popularity today through her theological-visionary writings, music, letters, and herbal remedies. However, knowing Hildegard only through one aspect of her life is to misunderstand Hildegard the person and to overlook the vision that illuminates and unifies the various strands that make up her life.

The author proposes to examine the different strands that make up the totality of Hildegard's life, emphasizing what is important for understanding such a compelling figure, while making her accessible to the general reader. She creates the metaphor of "mystical polyphony" to unite the strands. "Mystical" suggests that the integration of Hildegard's life and work derives from her spiritual life; "polyphony" describes how Hildegard's life comprises "overlapping and interwoven strands that make the piece a whole" (p. xv).

Mystical polyphony describes Hildegard's spiritual journey to God, the Living Light. Since all life is lived in his presence, the journey to God is made with God, whom we can experience in this life only in shadows. At the journey's end, we will be bathed in this Light. The Living Light speaks to Hildegard in visions, directing her to write and to speak; she responds in prose, poetry, music, and by ministering to the needs of the human heart and body. Hildegard says that the Living Light, her constant companion, has shown her the work she is to do.

The author begins by describing various forces that shaped Hildegard's life. They provide a framework for understanding her work. First is the Abbey of St. Disibod, where Hildegard lived for forty-four years, beginning at age eight. The lush green land around the abbey and the moist fragrant soil must certainly be the inspiration for Hildegard's guiding image, viriditas (Latin for "greenness"). For Hildegard it is a profound yet dynamic synonym for the life-giving qualities of God's spirit in matter, both human and nonhuman. Spring is filled with viriditas, God breathed viriditas into Adam and Eve in the Garden and gave them life, the smallest twig or tree is animated with viriditas, the cleric who is filled with weariness lacks viriditas, the novice must strive for viriditas, and the consecrated Virgin is viridissima virga (p. 7).

In the abbey, Hildegard learned to read and write German and Latin and studied the Bible, especially the Psalms of the Divine Office. She lived the contemplative life in the Benedictine spiritual tradition with its Eucharistic liturgies and celebration of liturgical hours. Word, music, and light were, for Hildegard, media in which the human and divine meet, a foretaste of the celestial home. There was no doubt about this joining taking place, given the medieval worldview in which there was no separation between natural and supernatural. God inhabited, sustained, and guided the world he created; it was natural to meet him in it.

The tumultuous world outside the abbey drew Hildegard's attention. She wrote or spoke about the Crusades, the Cathar heresy, the papal schism, power struggles between kings of Germany, the Investiture Controversy, and the growth of monasticism, as well as its reform by Bernard of Clairvaux.

The interconnectedness of the divine and the human becomes apparent in Hildegard's theological-visionary works. Scivias comprises twenty-six visions, accompanied by twenty-six brightly colored miniatures, divided into three parts: 1. The beauty of creation and the results of the Fall; 2. Salvation through the Incarnation, present in the world through the Church and sacraments; 3. The journey to the Kingdom of God, the process of sanctification. There is a heavy use of allegory to portray the future, using feminine images such as Ecclesia, Caritas, Synagoga, and Sapientia.

Her work Liber Vitae Meritorum evokes the visions through language and imagination. Its central image is of a man so tall that he reaches from the depths of the ocean to the heavens. He turns his head in different directions, then interprets what he sees and hears. This book focuses on the microcosm, on the temptations of life, and how to resist them with the help of God. Its theme is salvation and the advantage of living a virtuous life that will glorify God. Hildegard creates new pairs of virtues and vices, for example, Heavenly Joy vs. Worldly Sadness. Viriditas appears as omnem viriditatem, embellishments of earth's greenness that Heavenly Joy collects with her flowers. Worldly Sadness does not see the creation around her.

De Operatione Dei combines the macrocosm of Scivias and the microcosm of Liber Meritorum in ten visions, with pictorial representations, and three parts: 1. God's love for the created world, the microcosm; 2. The unique place of humanity in creation from the standpoint of morality and judgment, the world hereafter, human destiny; 3. An exposition of the meaning of the Prologue of the Gospel of John, the history of salvation, the macrocosm.