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<h1 align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hildegard of Bingen</font></h1>
<div align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Kate Robinson
2004</b></font> </div>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <i>� man flies
with the two wings of rationality, that is to say, with the knowledge of good
and evil. The right wing is good knowledge and the left, evil. Evil knowledge
serves the good, and good knowledge is kept in check by the evil, and is even
made more discerning by it. Indeed the good is made wise in all things through
the evil. </i></font></p>
<p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">Extract
of letter from Hildegard to the Monk Guibert</font></p>
<p align="right"> </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The twelfth century nun, Hildegard
of Bingen (1098- 1179), grew up in a Benedictine monastery, left there by
her parents at the age of eight, and by all accounts had a pretty miserable
time. When she was about thirty-eight, Hildegard owned up to having 'visions'
sent from God. She experienced the visions from when she was a small child,
but had kept them secret: '�for fear of the scepticism of others, the shrugging
of shoulders, and the manifold gossip of mankind�' Spurred on by encouragement
from the eminent intellectual heavyweight of the day, Bernard of Clairvaux,
and subsequently by Papal approval, Hildegard dictated descriptions of her
visions to her faithful scribe and secretary, the monk, Volmar, and throughout
the rest of her life, Hildegard produced a substantial and fascinating body
of work ranging from music to medicine to cosmology and God.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <i><font size="-1">Hildegard
dictates her visions, emanating like flames from above, to the monk, Volmar.
</font></i><font size="-1">Liber Scivias</font><i><font size="-1">, copy of
the former Rupertsberg Codex, c. 1180; St Hildegard's Abbey, Eibingen </font></i></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hildegard became known as the Seer,
the Prophetess of the Rhine. Miracles and healing were attributed to her and
her community was famous throughout Europe. She had correspondents all over
the continent, whom she chastised and encouraged, nurtured and cajoled; her
letters betray a fierce, a fiery and a gentle character. The first of her
books, <i>Scivias</i>, or the <i>Know the Way</i>, took ten years to write.
Subsequently, among others, came the <i>Book of Divine Works</i> and <i>Physica</i>,
as well as a series of song cycles for voice and musical instrument, <i>The
Play of the Virtues</i> and <i>The Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations</i>.
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Despite her prolific output,
however, Hildegard always professed to be an illiterate and uneducated woman.
She maintained that her understanding of medical and cosmological matters,
as well as the way of life that the nuns in her community followed, were directly
inspired by visions from God. </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Subsequently, the image of Hildegard
has been used as a screen for devotional projections by the left and right
and points in between. A procession to mark the 750th anniversary of her death,
near the site of her original community in Bingen, in 1929, for example, was
rumoured to have attracted 25,000 people. On the other hand, according to
a contemporary American born nun who lived within the community at Eibingen
that Hildegard created for over a quarter of a century, 'Everybody started
reading Hildegard' because of the interest stimulated by the ex-Dominican,
Matthew Fox: '�they all wanted to make her their own, the esoteric and the
New Agers, the feminists, the ecologists and what have you. They all said,
"She's our woman." We said Hildegard's task was different.' </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm not sure when I first got interested
in Hildegard. I have a postcard of one of her images, titled Universe, that
sits on my desk in front of my computer. It's sitting there now, as I write.
It has been there for years, robustly radiating mystery. I had always found
it very calming and centring. I still do and I still don't really know why
because in some ways it's quite a disturbing image. Its got little gargoyles
who are all very busy vomiting up bits of heaven; eggs, or pellets, that seem
to be on fire; slugs secreting body fluids. </font></p>
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">The Universe
<i>Liber Scivias</i> </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">When I was asked to write a paper
for a conference on 'The State of the Real' at Glasgow School of Art, I thought
that this would be a good time to look at Hildegard's images more closely.
Hildegard herself was for many years reluctant to admit to the 'reality' of
her visions. And yet, as I was able to discover on studying them, each image
provides a brilliantly concise, evocative and beautiful pr�cis of twelfth
century natural philosophy. What I offer below is my interpretation of three
of Hildegard's images, beginning with a new improved interpretation of what,
in my original ignorance, I thought in Universe were snails and radiated frogspawn.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In the centre of Universe is a
spherical world. It's packed with shapes and colours that represent the elements.
The egg shapes stand for the element of earth; gold represents fire; the darkness
denotes ether; and the dash of blue and white represents a mixture of water
and air. Surrounding the circular world is a billowing cloud of blue and white.
This likewise represents a kind of watery air. It was thought in Medieval
and earlier Aristotelian cosmology that the heavens were filled with liquid,
and this is Hildegard's simple visual rendition of the idea. Around the billowing
cloud are the strange snail shapes. In fact these shells protect the lower
earth from the fire of heaven, as well as helping to direct the winds. The
small grim belching faces personify the force of the wind itself. Surrounding
the earth are the fixed stars and the Moon, shown both in its waxing and waning
state. Directly above the Moon are the two inner planets, shown as slightly
larger stars, Mercury and Venus. Around the rim of the fixed stars is a dark
area, again representing ether. Interspersed through the ether are heaps of
egg-shapes with radiating flames. These denote the element of earth, or matter,
connected by fire to the outermost part of heaven, the primum mobile. Here,
in this outermost region are the Sun and the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn, shown as large stars. One of the unusual aspects of this mandala-like
picture is the absence of an obvious image of God. Only the flames piercing
out of the very frame of the picture point to a numinous dimension. But like
all of Hildegard's images it represents a vision of the unified and dynamic
connection of every constituent of matter. </font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">The Fall
<i>Liber Scivias </i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The image above, from Hildegard's
<i>Scivias</i>, represents the Fall. At the corners are images to represent
air, fire, earth and water. The border is made of a repeated motif of the
winds blowing in opposite directions. This is to suggest the sense of dynamism
and movement in the scene. Elsewhere Hildegard talks about the idea of the
winds pushing and pulling, creating dynamism. The upper part is devoted to
planets and stars in a blue heaven. Air and fire, or the sun, act downwards
from the heavens; water and earth are below, at the level of the earth. A
large black serpent, like smoke, rising from an earthy cauldron of flames
at the very base of the picture, rises up and pierces the sky. Meanwhile Adam,
levitating horizontal above flowering trees - the Garden of Eden - cups his
hand to his ear as he listens to the roaring flames of the inferno below.
He is midway between heaven and earth. The flames themselves, to which he
is listening, are in diagonal opposition to the benevolent flames of the sun
in the top right hand corner of the picture. From Adam's rib, sprouts a cloud
of stars. This is Hildegard's un-bodied image of Eve, the Mother of All Living.
The stars of Eve, shooting out of Adam, reflect the stars of the sky. They
also make a pun on the idea of Stella maris, a name of Mary, star of the sea,
the sea of heaven. Reiterating the piercing of the sky, the serpent pierces
the cloud of stars with a triple pronged tongue. The image is both sexual
as well as referring to speech. The active serpent speaks while the passive
Adam listens. But there is also a subtle symbiosis in the serpent and Adam's
relationship. The serpent's smoky emanations pierce into the lower level of
the sky; in the meantime, Adam's head pierces the side of the serpent, his
hand stretching out along the level of its neck. If you turn the whole image
on its head, it looks as though Adam is simultaneously being crushed by the
weight of the serpent while he is also actually holding him up. The picture
is very finely balanced. But you also wonder what on earth was going on in
Hildegard's head! </font></p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hildegard said of her visions:
</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> '�The visions which I saw I did
not perceive in dreams nor when asleep nor in a delirium nor with the eyes
or ears of the body. I received them when I was awake and looking around with
a clear mind, with the inner eyes and ears, in open places according to the
will of God�.' </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In a letter to a monk who befriended
her, she said:</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> '�my perception of things depends
on the shifting of the clouds and other elements of creation. Still I do not
hear these things with bodily ears, nor do I see them with the cogitations
of my heart or the evidence of my five senses. I see them only in my spirit,
with my eyes wide open�' </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The neurologist, Dr Oliver Sacks,
following on from the historian of science, Charles Singer, who first mooted
the idea in 1917, has suggested that Hildegard's visions were the result of
migraine. It is recorded that Hildegard suffered from debilitating diseases
from an early age. For Sacks, Hildegard's 'splendid and beautiful' stars become:
'� a shower of phosphenes [tiny sparks common in the early stages of migraine]
in transit across the visual field, their passage succeeded by a negative
scotoma'. </font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Head of God
<i>Liber Scivias</i> </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">He suggests that her images of
the City of God represent migrainous 'fortifications', a common pixellated
disturbance of the visual field. He describes her 'Head of God', as depicting
a 'typically migrainous fortification figure�radiating from a central point,
which�is brilliantly luminous and coloured'. That Hildegard may or may not
have suffered from migraine, and whether or not we can believe her when she
says that she was an uneducated woman, her writings belie a pretty comprehensive
knowledge of the important texts of the day.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Her<i> Scivias</i>, or <i>Know
the Way</i> and <i>Physica</i> show knowledge of the medical writings of Galen,
Pliny, Isidore of Seville, as well as references to Augustine and the physics
and cosmology of Aristotle. The two communities she founded - of around twenty
nuns following the Benedictine rule - one at Rupertsberg, and one at Eibingen,
near Mainz, were very close to the great libraries and centres of scholarship,
Worms, Metz and Triers. Hildegard's 'Head of God', it seems to me, is a complex
image of the Trinity and of the relationship of God to humanity. In the lower
left, three rows of battlements rise in a diagonal to meet the awesome un-bodied
face in the centre. Rising from the face to the upper right, is a single solid
plane in gold. The lower battlements, I think, signify the world and the diversity
of man's creation, while the crenellations of the upper plane become like
Jacob's Ladder, visually leading the eye out of the frame. The two constituents
of the image meet, unify and transform within the Head of God itself. The
three wings radiating from the Head optically reiterate the idea of three
separate elements being unified into one structure. One wing pierces the frame
of the picture: to show that God can break all boundaries. </font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The God of Illumination
<i>Liber Scivias</i> </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In another of the images from Scivias,
the wings of the Creator God pierce the frame. The image is in three parts.
At the top is a golden image of the Divine. In the centre is a mountain with
people. At the bottom, on an abstract background of stars, are two conceptual
figures. In the bottom left is an apocalyptic figure which we know from the
text is called 'Fear of the Lord'. This tall figure, giving a key to the picture
as a whole, is covered in a pattern of eyes. It is an image of illumination,
of vision. The great Illuminator is on the top of the mountain, which itself
is covered with a pattern of apertures in which are revealed the faces of
people watching the spectacle that unfolds before their eyes, like so many
little television sets. A river of gold runs down from the figure on the mountain
to cover the head, eyes, ears, mouth and all, of the figure at the bottom
right of the picture. This is an image of a little girl, called 'Poverty of
Spirit'. The idea is that the senses should be filled up with an image of
the divine. It recalls Dante's idea that the vision of angels is contiguous
with the image of God. </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> <i>From the first moment these
beings found their bliss </i></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>Within God's face in which all
is revealed, </i></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>They never turned their eyes
away from It; </i></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>Hence no new object interrupts
their sight </i></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>And hence, they have no need
of memory </i></font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>Since they do not possess divided
thought. </i></font></p>
<p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">Dante,
trans. Mark Musa, <i>Paradise</i> (USA: Penguin Classics, 1986), 29, 76-82.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I was surprised when I saw this
image of the golden stream connecting the three levels of the world, the divine,
the earthly and the inner workings of mankind, as it appears to me that a
version of the image has persisted. An image of 'A Young Girl with Hair raised
to Heaven' appears in the work of an Italian philosopher called Giulio Camillo
(1480?-1544). Camillo interpreted the image as meaning vigorous, strong or
trustworthy. Anecdotally, I heard recently of a woman who has recently had
a similar vision of hair streaming up to the heavens. Perhaps there is something
archetypal about this striking image, something real and dynamic to which
Hildegard was attuned. </font></p>
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<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Further Reading on Hildegard </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Baird, Joseph L. & Ehrman, Radd
K., trans. <i>The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen</i>, (Oxford University Press,
1998) </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Bowie, Fiona & Davies, Oliver,
eds. <i>Hildegard of Bingen</i>, (London: SPCK, 1990) </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Burnett, Charles, Kraye, Jill &
Ryan, W.F., eds. <i>Hildegard of Bingen, The Context of her Thought and Art</i>,
(London: The Warburg Institute, 1998) </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Maddocks, Fiona,<i> Hildegard of
Bingen</i>, (London: Headline, 2001) </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sacks, Oliver, <i>Migraine</i>,
(London: Picador, 1995)</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Schipperges, Heinrich, trans.
John Cumming, <i>The World of Hildegard of Bingen</i>, (Tunbridge Wells: Burns
& Oates, 1998) </font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Singer, Charles,<i> From Magic
to Science, Essays on the Scientific Twilight</i>, (London: Benn, 1928)</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Warner, Marina, <i>Monuments and
Maidens</i>, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985) </font></p>
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