© Krista Scott 1997

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), also known as "Sibyl of the Rhine", was a mystic, visionary, philosopher, cosmologist, poet, composer, healer, scientist, and teacher of the medieval period. Her many and varied works have only recently begun to be looked at with interest by scholars.

Hildegard was a medieval woman, and the dangers of injecting contemporary theory into the study of the past are well known. Edward Peter Nolan, in his study of Hildegard’s feminine poetics, writes: "...I am as concerned as anybody about the anachronistic bootlegging of later concerns into Hildegard’s mid-twelfth century attitudes..."[1] So should we all be. However, I use contemporary theory here not to "prove" anything, but to provide myself with a point of entry into Hildegard’s works. The purpose of this essay is not give answers or "the definitive solution" about the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, but rather to ask questions. How can we situate Hildegard in relation to both "masculine" and "feminine" discourse (and exactly what defines these forms of gendered discourse)? Does she indeed have a feminine mode of expression as defined by contemporary theorists? How can we contextualize her writing against the background of the medieval period in general, and the religious life in particular? What were the many influences present in her work, and what is the significance for her recovery into the framework of women and culture?

The purpose of this exercise, then, is not to show how Hildegard’s works "fit" contemporary theories about what is masculine and feminine discourse; in fact the opposite is true: I test the ideas of gendered discourse against her writings to examine the utility of such definitions. In addition, I explore and develop some themes in her writing that I think are of some interest not just for Hildegard as a gendered voice, but as a religious medieval one.

A quick note about language: Hildegard wrote in vulgate Latin, and so there exists not only a historical distance between us, but also a linguistic one, as I am working with translations. Where possible I have tried to obtain more than one translation so that I am not relying on the interpretation of only one translator.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was born into a noble family as the tenth and last child, "in Bermersheim, a village near the town of Alzey in the pleasant undulating country bordering the southern bank of the Rhine not far from Mainz." [2] Hildegard’s placement within the nobility by birth, as well as her eventual familiarity and relationships with other noble families, gave her self-confidence in her authority and legitimacy of her ideas. "No doubt when Hildegard finally decided to make her writings public her self-esteem was bolstered by confidence in her position in the social hierarchy" [3].

While we tend to think of Hildegard as an adult visionary, she reveals that her ability for "divine illumination" began while in the womb, stating:

However, for fear of social disapproval, Hildegard refrained from writing about or formally discussing her visions until she was forty, when "in a vision [she] felt forced by great pressure of pain to reveal what [she] had heard and seen". [5]

Fortunately for her visionary temperament, Hildegard was placed in a nunnery at age eight under the care of Jutta of Spanheim, who lived in an enclosed set of rooms at the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. Jutta taught the young Hildegard some basic skills of literacy: how to read and write, a functional grasp of Latin, and how to "perform the opus dei, the daily round of prayer which formed the liturgical basis of monastic life"[6] . However, it is clear from Hildegard’s account of her abilities that she was not given the kind of schooling to which young monks were privy: she learned no formal grammar or scholarly Latin, nor did she peruse foundational philosophic or literary texts. Yet whatever her original education, there can be no doubt that throughout her life she "read widely and deeply".[7] Approaching maturity at age fifteen, Hildegard decided to assume the Benedictine veil. At this point the small collection of enclosed rooms had become a larger convent, and in 1136 when Jutta died, Hildegard assumed her post, elected unanimously by the other nuns.

As mentioned, Hildegard had experienced visions for most of her life, accompanied by episodes of severe illness (which several scholars feel is evidence that Hildegard suffered from migraines), but it was not until age forty-two that she felt compelled to record them and reveal them to others. This sense of compulsion from God signals that Hildegard felt her private visions had evolved such that they were now appropriate for public prophecies and spiritual writings. Using the text of the visions, Hildegard began labouring on her first major writing project, Scivias (Know the Ways), the ending of which Hildegard set to music and was performed as Ordo Virtutum (The Play of the Virtues). Whatever reservations might have lingered in her mind about the public unveiling of her ideas were dispersed by the enthusiastic endorsement which she received from the religious establishment, most notably from Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian pope Eugenius III, who read her work in progress to those present at the Synod of Trier (1147-8). Bernard was the first to reassure a worried Hildegard that her visions were indeed sent from God, and Eugenius was so struck by her works that he authorized her "‘in the name of Christ and St. Peter to publish all that she had learned from the Holy Spirit.’"[8]

Scivias took ten years for Hildegard to complete. Thanks to copious official public recognition, the monastery was doing tremendously well, receiving endowments, an improved reputation, young noble female recruits complete with extensive dowries and so forth. However, the convent’s lack of autonomy and space was becoming a problem. The solution appeared to Hildegard in a vision, and emboldened by her authoritative status on all fronts, she decided to move her convent to Rupertsberg, close to Bingen on the Rhine. This was a contentious decision, not least because of the difficulty of prying the nuns’ finances away from the monastery’s control. At any rate, after some difficult years, Hildegard succeeded in dividing the assets between the two institutions of Disibodenberg and Rupertsberg.

During this time she wrote two of her major scientific works, Physica (Natural History) and Causae et curae (Causes and Cures). Physica is a meditation on the workings of the natural world, which Causae et curae is a detailed index of medical aspects of the human body, as well as the healing properties of various substances. In addition, she wrote her second book based on her visions, Liber vitae meritorum (The Book of Life’s Merits), which recounts images of vices and virtues.

At almost sixty years of age, in 1158, Hildegard took the final step towards public spirituality: she embarked on speaking tours and travelled to the centres surrounding the river Mainz. Despite Biblical edicts against women speaking in public [9], she lectured to lay people and clergy alike with great success. In 1163 she commenced work on her third and last visionary piece, Liber divinorum operum (Book of God’s Works), also known as De operatione Dei (On the Activity of God). This was completed in 1176, delayed by the death of Hildegard’s faithful friend and provost, the monk Volmar, to whom she had first confided her visions.

It is important to note that Hildegard did not confine her writings to her visionary and scientific studies (although this alone is astonishingly far-reaching), but also engaged in a spirited political correspondence not only to church officials but also to Frederick I (Barbarossa), whom she met with in 1155. Despite Frederick’s having issued her and her convent an order of imperial protection in 1163, through repeated correspondence Hildegard vigorously denounced his machinations in the German papal schism. In 1178 Hildegard wrote what was possibly her most persuasive letter: to the prelates of Mainz who had imposed an interdict upon her and her community after she had buried in the convent’s graveyard (and refused to exhume) the body of a man the Church had excommunicated. Hildegard managed to have the interdict lifted only after appealing to Archbishop Christian of Mainz. Seven months later, she died, and legend has it that "two streams of light appeared in the skies and crossed over the room in which she was..."[10]

Though she was never officially canonized due to administrative problems, in 1324 Pope John XXII "gave permission for her ‘solemn and public cult’, and Hildegard’s status today is that of a canonical saint."[11]

Hildegard often derides her education, claiming that she was schooled by an "unlearned woman"[12], and that she has never been taught "by external means, but only within, in my soul"[13]. Yet Nolan writes that Hildegard’s discursive difficulties are "not those posed by an illiterate woman, but rather by someone who is in fact fully literate, but insufficiently trained as an exegete in the full range of canonical texts and available interpretive methodologies."[14] In her Vita Hildegard explains that: "In [a] vision I suddenly had knowledge of the writings of the prophets, the evangelists, and other saints, and some philosophers, but without any human teaching..."[15] Nolan, as previously mentioned, feels that there is no doubt that Hildegard "read widely and deeply".[16] Indeed:

It has been suggested that Hildegard’s sheltered academic existence may have shielded her from the more misogynist aspects of contemporary male theorizing.[18] The significance of Hildegard’s claim of a divine source of knowledge is twofold: it frees her from the necessity of a formal academic education, and it lends legitimacy to her scholastic endeavours. At any rate, whether or not Hildegard’s claim regarding her source of knowledge is exaggerated, it is clear that she had at least some familiarity with the philosophical and theological concerns of her male contemporaries.

Western philosophy has traditionally been seen as an extremely masculine discipline with its insistence on rationality, abstract and analytic thought and the separation of mind from body. During Hildegard’s time this was unequivocally the case, as the study of philosophy was confined to the male preserves of the monastery and university. To study philosophy also required schooling in such areas as Latin and Greek, logic, classical rhetoric, biblical exegesis, mathematics, and science. Therefore for the purposes of this essay we can categorize philosophy as the language of the masculine. Would Hildegard be able to translate and speak this language as she deciphered her spiritual visions?

At the time of Hildegard, there was no arbitrary division between theology and philosophy; the medieval theologia was generally viewed as a branch of philosophy. Boethius (480-524), defining theologia in the early Middle Ages, distinguishes it from physica and mathematics in that it "deals with that which is wholly free from matter and motion, the divine Substance".[19] Yet since the medieval thinkers had no conception of separation between secular and sacred topics, the majority of philosophical questions with which they wrestled had explicit or implicit theological dimensions. Later thirteenth century Christian philosophers such as Arnulfus Provincialis divided everything into either "human" or "divine" sciences, and defined theologia as simply one of the aspects of study handed down directly from God.[20] Studying philosophy of all kinds was a "means to that growth towards perfection in virtue and knowledge which is necessary... to be saved from the consequences of the Fall."[21] In other words, the study of philosophy brought one closer to God. Thus a brief overview of medieval philosophy tells us immediately that philosophical concerns were blurred with theological concerns.

As yet, there was little sense of a systematic cosmology or philosophic system [22], and twelfth century thinkers struggled to assemble one from scanty fragments of scientific knowledge and a limited selection of ancient philosophy [23]. The question arose in the study of theologia or Christian philosophy as to whether reason should be used when examining questions of faith, for often the use of reason and logic poked holes in Christian doctrines. During Hildegard’s time, rational method was not particularly contentious, but scholars began to be more uncomfortable with it through the later twelfth century; in 1215 William of Auxerre "states the view that it is ‘perverse’ to try to prove articles of faith by human reason. Faith cannot be established by proof; indeed, if it could be demonstrated by human reason alone it would have no merit."[24] In essence, the great question became "whether theological truths could or could not be established by philosophical methods..."[25] If rational method was used, there was the danger of exposing articles of faith to the same rigorous scrutiny employed in the arena of philosophical debate, with a possible result being that the article of faith could be exposed as invalid. How much philosophy should be permitted within the field of theology?

Though they bickered about the methodological use of philosophical reason, medieval thinkers all agreed upon a "doctrine of divine illumination".[26] The metaphor of light and illumination and its associations with creation, goodness and intellectual eureka was archetypal in its familiarity to early Christian thinkers as well as philosophers of the Middle Ages. To Christians the idea of divine illumination was directly linked to the workings of God, and was comprehended in three ways. The first was the that illumination was the "light of faith, shed on men and women so that they might believe... it was the means by which God’s people were to know him."[27] Secondly, "it was the insight by which truth is recognized"[28], the conceptual framework necessary to understand fundamental things about the world. Third, "it provided a means of assessing and identifying the evidence brought into the mind by the senses."[29]

Thus the two sides of the medieval philosophic coin were education and illumination; one taught, one inherent. It is not surprising that the point of entry into philosophy and theology for a few intrepid women was through divine illumination, which compensated for the lack of a formal education. However, Hildegard combines both reason and vision: her illumination is not the passionate semi-erotic mysticism of a Margery Kempe; rather, has a "cool, non-ecstatic quality".[30] In addition, besides her mystic writings, she wrote two books of natural science. Although "[h]er writings can reveal a linear, scientific mode of expression, stereotypically labeled as ‘masculine’[,]... [t]he other way in which her thoughts unfold could be described as an associative process."[31]

Hildegard’s works are based upon visions which she feels were brought to her through divine illumination, and metaphors of light figure prominently in her writings. In a letter to a colleague she describes the nature of the light which appears to her in her visions:

To this light Hildegard ascribes not only freedom from pain, but also divine knowledge. The "divine" source of her knowledge can be read in many ways: that she rejects male-identified philosophical discourse, that she compensates in this manner for her lack of formal philosophical education, that through this assertion she deliberately subverts the formal academic order, that she reveals herself as alien Other to an unfamiliar mode of scholarship, and/or that she is seeking/inventing a new language of her own with which she can more easily communicate.

At any rate, Hildegard was concerned with many of the same philosophic and theological issues as her male contemporaries: the creation of a cosmology, how to know God, the nature of virtue, and so forth. From her scientific works it is clear that she possesses a linear and analytic mode of thinking. She is able to overcome her lack of formal schooling by claiming divine knowledge. Yet her work is not completely analogous to that of medieval male academics. Her distinctive style does not "fit" completely with discourse considered masculine. Thus we must turn to theories of the feminine to explain other aspects of her writings.

If philosophy and theology were so-called masculine disciplines, what then is the language of the feminine? The gendering of language is a recent concept, and one which was surely not present at the time of Hildegard. What exactly constitutes a feminine voice? Scholars have different opinions on what it is, or whether such a thing exists at all, although to prove or disprove its existence is not the purpose of this essay. In addition, there is division as to whether this language, if it exists and is used, is empowering or marginalizing. At any rate, these theories themselves (while undoubtedly problematic) certainly do exist, and it is interesting to apply their principles to the work of Hildegard. There are, of course, theoretical difficulties in attempting to foist contemporary concerns on to her writings, since she wrote within a much different political and social context, but proponents of feminine voice theories feel that there is a voice common to all women. By examination of her writings we may test that claim.

Concerning the feminine voice, our first question must be: what is it and where does it come from? Theorists disagree on this point. Nolan feels that "the synthetic impulse can and should be at least tentatively classified as a characteristically feminine impulse, and the analytic habit of mind as male."[33] He sees the use of synthesis, or holistic reading, as characteristic particularly of feminine discourse. Additionally, Nolan points out the self-referentiality of Hildegard’s work in that it resists easy biblical exegesis, and so does not subscribe to conventional forms of the "developing [medieval] analytic tradition."[34]

Nolan, however, steers clear of the idea that a gendered voice springs from biological configuration as male or female. Instead he proposes that "[a]ny such idea of en/gendering, in order to be intelligible, must be seen as culturally shaped..."[35] By contrast, Luce Irigaray argues that feminine speech is based on the body, and particularly the experience of particularly female pleasure. Her theory of the "two lips" (i.e. of the vulva) leads her to view the feminine as necessarily a language of plurality of meaning. She states:

Thus Irigaray endorses multiplicity of meaning as one of the defining characteristics of the feminine voice, brought on by women’s unique physical configuration. She also posits, based on her empirical research, that women are less likely to make themselves the subject of discourse, i.e. to use "I", than men. "Women efface themselves in discourse by representing themselves obliquely, not as ‘I’ or even ‘she’, but in generic terms which conflate ‘human’ and ‘masculine’."[37]

Another leading theorist of the feminine voice is Julia Kristeva. Like Irigaray, her ideas are rooted in psychoanalysis, but unlike Irigaray, Kristeva feels that "the subject position one takes up in entering the symbolic order [the arena of discourse] is not determined by one’s anatomy, but by one’s identification (or not) with the mother."[38] Assuming women are more directly linked to the mother, Kristeva argues that they "retain stronger links than do masculine subjects to the pre-symbolic (Imaginary) stage and the pre-Oedipal mother figure."[39] Discourse of the feminine is associated with "the nonrational elements of language,"[40] such as "madness, poetry, art in general"[41] and "rhythm, intonation, gaps, meaninglessness and general disruption of the rational, symbolic flow."[42]

Kristeva’s conception of speaking the feminine within another discursive order is similar to proposals by radical feminists such as Mary Daly, who in her Wickedary suggests that Websters, or female word-weavers, "unwind the bindings of mummified/numbified words. This process involves Hearing/Speaking through Other Time/Space."[43] Daly’s play on "other" invokes both Irigaray’s displaced female subjectivity (i.e. the speaking "Subject" vs. the "Other" who is the object of or absence in discourse) as well as Kristeva’s suggestion of another realm of feminine language. In addition, to proposing an alternate feminine language, Daly launches a scathing attack on the male discourse of philosophy, defining a "full-osopher" as: "one who fails to seek wisdom, having deluded himself into believing that he possesses it."[44] She sets the male-identified "full-osopher" against the female-identified "Philosophia" thus: "[The] wisdom formulated by women; love for the wisdom of women; desire and passion for understanding; an intellectual urge toward love of life."[45]

At first glance, Hildegard’s writings and worldview do not seem to be what these writers consider to be distinctively feminine. She believes firmly in social hierarchy and can be meddlingly authoritarian, invoking the wrath of God upon those who thwarted her firm control of people and institutions. She is not concerned with particulars of life as a woman, but attempts to delineate a universal cosmology. Her teachings are not emotional, "intensely devotional, erotic [or] ecstatic"[46], rather they are "prophetic and didactic"[47]. But a closer examination reveals many of the characteristics of the feminine style described by Nolan, Irigaray, Kristeva and Daly in her published writings. Indeed, Hildegard spoke the language of the feminine in a very literal sense, for she in fact invented a language of about nine hundred words and twenty-three letters which she used among her nuns (this creation has earned her Daly’s endorsement as "Gynergetic Genius"[48]).

Since she was a virgin nun of the medieval period (which leaned heavily towards asceticism), female bodily experience and jouissance, as endorsed by Irigaray, seems like the last place from which Hildegard would derive a language. Yet if we recall Irigaray’s point about "two lips" on a more figurative level to refer to a plurality of meaning, it becomes apparent that Hildegard does indeed utilize this technique. Not only does she avoid using traditionally male-identified "either/or" dualist thought in favour of a more expansive "both/and" paradigm, but she layers her meanings one over the other like Daly’s Webster/Word-Weaver, who spins and weaves the threads which disappear and reappear rythmically in the word tapestry, so that her writings resist simple interpretation.[49] Hildegard’s "both/and" paradigm is one in which "the first develops the second [meaning, and] does not contradict the second, but differs from the second."[50] Unravelling the relationship of the sign to the signified in Hildegard’s works would tangle the techniques of many semioticians, for not only can one symbol have many meanings, one meaning can have many symbols. "She sometimes uses many words for one concept; then again, she may use many concepts per one word or symbol."[51] In Scivias, for example, Hildegard gives at least ten and often up to thirty-five different but related interpretations for her each of her visions.

It is also very significant when examining Hildegard’s writing to consider Irigaray’s concept of female subjective self-displacement/effacement. This is so for two reasons: Hildegard’s technique of humility combined with self-assertion, and her authority of divine voice. The first aspect, Hildegard’s simultaneous self-abasement and self-confidence, is found particularly in her correspondence. She consistently refers to herself as "ego paupercula feminea forma" ("me, in the form of a poor little female")[52]; "plus quam misera in nomine femineo" ("more than wretched in bearing the name of woman")[53]; and "a mere poor woman; a vessel of clay".[54] Yet her lively and often fiery correspondence to heads of state and church belies this humility. At Pope Anastasius IV, who had a reputation for overlooking corruption in his ranks, she thunders: "So it is, O man, that you who sit in the chief seat of the Lord, hold him in contempt when you embrace evil, since you do not reject it but kiss it, by silently tolerating it in depraved men."[55] After he had appointed Calixtus III as his third illegal antipope, Hildegard furiously wrote to Frederick I: "He-who-is speaks: "I shall destroy the insolent along with the contradiction of those who despise me, I shall crush them by myself. Pain, pain to this evil of evils spurning me. Hear this, King, if you want to live. Or I run you through with my sword!"[56] Thus Hildegard reclaims and re-visions the status of a "poor little woman" "[p]recisely by appropriating a typically male, anti-feminist cliché back into her own particular situation and personal history..."[57] How ironic her intent was is unclear, for exaggerated humility was a conventional form of address among religious at this time. A similar technique of juxtaposed modesty and assertiveness can be found in the seventeenth-century writings of another nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who wrote to her critic:

In this excerpt, though she claims less authority than Hildegard, Sor Juana also is confident in her capacities. She cleverly conceals the pointed strikes of her wit beneath the mantle of modesty, weaving a verbal tapestry in which alternating threads of humility and calm assertiveness surface. The simultaneous self-deprecation and self-assertion as a tool of subversion appears to be a common thread running through the writing of religious women separated even by five hundred years.

Something else which is interesting to contemplate is the role of "womenspace" in the shaping and development of a feminine discourse which is simultaneously humble and assertive. In the medieval period several major circulating philosophic tracts set out women’s inferiority in no uncertain terms, and so women who chose the profession of nuns were considered somewhat morally superior to monks because they had overcome greater difficulties to become "brides of Christ". The female space of the convent, then, was sanctified in a particular way, exempt from the normal contempt reserved for women by philosophical and church doctrine. Although she would have had contact with the monks of Disibodenberg in various ways, and although she had several good male friends such as her provost Volmar, Hildegard’s space of the convent was one which was essentially female, and it was female in a particular way: it was not the traditionally female-identified space of the domestic sphere of childrearing and housework [59]; rather it was a female space where women engaged in intellectual and spiritual pursuits with no marital demands. Of course, everyone had to help out with domestic duties of daily living, but nuns were able to interact with themselves and others in a manner which was fundamentally different in its character from secular women. The convent was (eventually) a self-contained unit of women who had no responsibilities towards conjugal male partners whether sexual or domestic. Since they were consecrated to God and were no longer viewed as sexual beings in relation to men, medieval nuns were more free to develop an intellectual and spiritual life. "But even more important, they vowed themselves to chastity, and as brides of Christ became the virgins most fit to walk at the head of the procession of the Christian host."[60] Nunneries were seen less as "holding tanks for girls"[61] awaiting marriage, and more as spiritual institutions in their own right. This would have been the realm in which Hildegard existed, confident of her professional authority within her community and her productive spiritual relationships with other women, while still maintaining the humility which was part of medieval religious life.

The second reason to consider Irigaray’s concept of female subjective self-displacement/effacement within the writing of Hildegard is the significance of divine voice. At no time in her writings does Hildegard trumpet her own learning or capacity for thought; instead she assigns gratitude and responsibility for her gifts to God. Whether she claims the authority of God to speak as a conscious subversion or whether the nun’s paradigm of the Middle Ages did not allow ownership of inspired voice is unclear. However, the characteristic simultaneity of God’s and Hildegard’s voice is significant. At times it is barely discernible who is truly speaking, as often Hildegard has God speak through her as a spirit speaks through a medium. In introducing her first book of visions, Scivias, she states:

This passage can be read as Hildegard’s excusing herself for writing despite lacking a formal education. Since the voice comes from God, she is able to record it without having to adhere to conventions of thought and theology which she is not comfortable using. In addition, this passage positions her not as the speaking subject or author of the work, but as a simple secretary of God--a mere recorder of divine commands. This is a technique which Hildegard also uses in her correspondence to lend emphasis to her arguments. To King Henry II of England she writes:

In this passage it is unclear whether it is God or Hildegard who addresses the king and commands him to mend his ways. By using the technique--consciously or not--of the divine voice speaking through her, Hildegard is able to communicate her thoughts, directives, and arguments while at the same time erasing her own subjectivity. It is interesting that this is another similarity which she shares across hundreds of years with Sor Juana, who writes: "My writing has never proceeded from any dictate of my own, but a force beyond me; I can in truth say, ‘You have compelled me’."[64] This correlation indicates that the women are less aligned by history and more by the context of being female religious intellectuals within a patriarchal church system. Of course, male religious writers have also felt compelled by God, but for medieval women this compulsion takes on a double meaning: both as legitimate illumination and as a substitute for the authority which they do not have for their own voice.

Similar to the initial incongruence to Irigaray, at first Hildegard does not seem to fit Kristeva’s theories either. She does not have an intimate link to the mother-relationship; on the contrary, she was separated from her mother at age eight. Yet there are reasons to believe that Kristeva’s qualifications are met. On a literal level of mothering, the fact that Hildegard was sealed into Jutta’s rooms for many years points to an intimate mentor-student relationship between them which might have approximated a surrogate mother-daughter connection. Hildegard’s writings frequently use metaphors of mothering in various ways, a theme which will be discussed further in a later section.

On a more figurative level, Kristeva’s account of the pre-linguistic dimension resonates in Hildegard’s descriptions of the suffering which she felt during the course of her visions. In a letter to a colleague she writes: "And I am constantly constrained by my infirmities, and many times I have been so enveloped by grave afflictions that they threatened to put death upon me, but up until now, God has sustained me." Theories abound regarding Hildegard’s visions as the offspring of migraines[65], although some authors, such as Sabina Flanagan, make the caveat that: "[S]uch a position should not be seen as reducing her spiritual or intellectual gifts to this claim alone. Not every migraine sufferer can claim Hildgegard’s achievements."[66] Yet Caroline Molina, in her article, "Illness as Privilege", argues that in fact: "In [Hildegard’s] self-referential writings, illness is defined as the precondition for mystic expression, and thus central to the ‘being’ of the mystic identity itself...[a]s a pre-linguistic, pre-conceptual source of divine inspiration..."[67] In other words, it is illness that is the point of entry for Hildegard into a discourse which is "beyond the logos"[68] of male-identified philosophy, and her weakness which provides her with vision at the margins of traditional academia. Since she is already an outsider by her sex, she is doubly so by her physical infirmities; thus, it is from this point "on the margins" that she is able to derive her unique illuminations which are a blend of formal instruction in the Scriptures and her own cosmological interpretations.

Although Hildegard’s theology is concerned with the development of a universal cosmology, she is also by vocation pastoral. Her interpretations are concrete and centre around what humans can do to achieve harmony with God and one another.[69] Given this importance of the world around her, it stands to reason that Hildegard must have been influenced by the dynamics of the people with whom she lived and worked, particularly the women who formed her convent. The writings of Hildegard contain many visions of women and female archetypes. The two subjects which I find most interesting are her interpretations of virgins and mothers.

When we think of virgins today, the connotations are often negative and specifically female. Our post-sexual revolution society tends to situate virgins in terms of aversion to sexuality, as prudes, naive schoolgirls, and spinsters. Virginity in our contemporary society, especially as it applies to women (and it generally does), is a highly contested realm of sexual politics. Coming from this, situated in our historical context, we might see medieval nuns’ official virginity as simply avoidance of marriage and sex. Certainly on some level it was for many, as the intellectual life could not really be nurtured within the domestic confines of a medieval household. A passage from Scivias seems to indicate that Hildegard was merely avoiding sex, as she likens spiritual misguidance to sexual deformity:

Virginity here seems to hinge upon the same things as today: avoidance of the "delights" of the flesh through self-restraint. Yet this is too reductionist, and too negative an explanation for Hildegard’s conception of the virgin as metaphor, particluarly since the virgin’s relationship to God is often described in erotic terms, as Hildegard writes in "O dulcissime amator":

Mary Daly defines "virgin" in her Wickedary as: "Wild, Lusty, Never captured, Unsubdued Old Maid; Marriage Resister,"[72] and this appears more analogous to Hildegard’s definition. Within medieval religious society, there is evidence that virginity was less about bodily status than about spiritual development: "In [nuns’] continence they imitated the Virgin Mary, or even in one formulation, the Church. The rich tradition of the nun as the espoused of Christ gave to professed women a unique and valued status in the Middle Ages."[73] Women who declared themselves virgins for life in the medieval period freed themselves from many of the gendered obstacles to intellectual and spiritual development; virginity freed them from being defined merely as sexual or breeding objects and allowed them to engage in professional relationships with men on a more neutral plane. Considering the abysmal conditions before birth control and modern obstetric medicine, it is easy to see why some women would seek alternatives.

Of course, the supreme virgin was Mary herself. Today we think of the Virgin Mary as a constraining and vapid ideal for women, but to a nun of Hildegard’s time, Mary was a powerful role model. It was through Mary that the Word of God was spoken directly. Any nun who experienced any kind of divine revelation must have felt in some way related to her. Mary, because of her virginity, was able to engage in a direct and meaningful relationship with God; it was through her womb that the words of God were mediated/translated. Hildegard is extremely concerned with this idea, and uses the metaphor of the womb to represent the site of contact with God. The medieval paradigm for virginity is a curious mixture: while it celebrates bodily continence, it also situates women’s capacity for divine discourse within their wombs; Mary is simultaneouly lauded in the writings of Hildegard for her virginity and fecundity. Often she uses language which seems to the modern reader to be oxymoronic, but to the medieval mind appears to present no problem: "With the Word of God giving forth wondrous light in the modesty of the Virgin in her fruitfulness, glorious virginity has been produced."[74] Mary’s virgin womb is fruitful and directly engages in discourse with God, bringing forth good things upon the earth, whereas Eve’s womb has been "ruined", cutting off her relationship with God. For Hildegard personally, there may have been a symbolic subsitution by the mouth for the womb, because it was not necessary for the medieval nun to become literally pregnant. However, virginity was probably the most important precondition by which a woman could communicate with God.

Hildegard composed many poems of praise to the Mary and the archetypal virgin, all of which reflect her belief that virginity was not constraint but a necessity for fruitful intellectual growth. One of her "Antiphons for the Virgin" (O quam magnum miraculum est) reads as follows:

Another reads: "The closed gate today/has opened for us/what the serpent stifled in the Woman./So in the dawn shines/the bloom of the Virgin Mary."[76] Hildegard sees Mary’s virginity (and probably that of her fellow nuns) as compensation for the destructive power of Eve. Although this dichotomy could be constructed in terms of "good" and "bad" sexuality, it is more interesting to note that Hildegard feels the problem is that Eve "ruined her womb with wounds of ignorance".[77] If we consider Hildegard’s view that Mary mediated God’s words through her womb, we can see that a woman "ruining her womb" eliminates that possibility. We know from the text of the Bible that Eve did no such thing in the literal sense, but since medieval Hildegard would locate discourse with God in women’s virginity, disobeying God’s commands would equal figurative bodily corruption. Thus the figure of the virgin in Hildegard’s medieval world was seen as a positive model for communication with God.

As previously mentioned, notwithstanding the Kristevan mother-link, Hildegard is already positioned by virtue of her physical situation in a particular relation to mothering. Her birth mother, Mechthild, source of emotional and physical nourishment, has been removed. She is forced into a relationship with a surrogate spiritual mother, Jutta, through confinement with her at the convent. When Jutta dies, Hildegard assumes the role and functions of a spiritual mother to her convent, and suffers disappointment when her favourite "daughter", Richardis of Stade, leaves "home" to take charge of another convent. In desperation at her loss, Hildegard attempts unsuccessfully to convince Richardis’ birth mother, as one parent to another, to send her daughter back. Thus her presence within the mother-daughter is in a state of constant flux, at times tenuous and fraught with pain, at times rewarding and positive. This ambiguity is reflected in her writings.

Carolyn Worman Sur, in her book The Feminine Images of God in the Visions of Saint Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias, points to a passage in Scivias which "strikingly illuminates a graphic description of a child who felt abandoned by her mother..."[78]:

In this passage Hildegard experiences both loss: "Even my mother has deserted me since I strayed from the way of salvation"[80]; as well as consolation: "And so I was delighted in my tears as I saw my mother."[81] Although Worman Sur does not elaborate much on this point, the image of the protective cave is clearly also reminiscent of the nurturing womb of the mother. Once again, this passage is an example of Hildegard’s layering of meaning: she may be referring to her mother on a literal level, she may be referring to the Mother Church (Ecclesia)[82] who shelters and protects, she speaks of Mother Zion whose figurative womb houses the temple of Jerusalem, and she may conceive of the cave itself as the womb of Mother Earth (we can also see here Hildegard’s use of womb imagery). Thus we can see how Hildegard’s use of the idea of mother can reflect several ideas simultaneously.

This particular vision in Scivias is worth developing further, for it provides many indications of Hildegard’s intellectual relationship to mothering. Parts of the initial vision are as follows:

Hildegard gives twenty-nine interpretations for this vision. Among these interpretations is this one:

Once again, Hildegard layers her meanings around the role of the mother. On a literal plane, the mother serves an important function: the care and nurture of the child in her womb. Given the reverence with which Hildegard approaches this subject, it is unlikely that she shares the Aristotelian(?) view that women are merely fetal incubators; rather, the mother in this vision is an important part of the process and cycle of life. However, while the mother is able to provide physical sustenance for the developing child, it is God who is needed to give it "life" and a spirit at just the right stage of growth. The human father is not mentioned at all, even as a source of the "human seed". Thus the mother and God work as a partnership in the creation of the child. On a figurative level, the body of the mother is that of the fecund earth, which when fertilized by the moisture from heaven, brings forth greenery and foliage. In addition, the womb serves as the vehicle for the word of God, as a translator/mediator of his commands, just as Hildegard’s writing does. Perhaps at some level this woman is herself, mothering her poetic creation which has been inspired by the breath of God.

Hildegard not only assumes the role of daughter but also of herself as mother, engaging in a cyclical Kristevan relationship in which she moves fluidly from one to the other. She often uses a mother-daughter framework to address her nuns:

In this passage, Hildegard is first a literal surrogate mother for these women, many of whom were likely sent to her at a young age. Secondly, she is a spiritual mother to them, and by "suckling at her breasts" they are drinking the milk of wisdom and religious instruction. Finally, she is "betrothed to God" by virtue of her vocation, and so his daughters are also hers (although she herself is also a "daughter of God"); through her guidance they will enter heaven (which takes upon a semi-erotic dimension in this passage). Once again we see Hildegard’s plurality of meaning which is both poetic and instructive.

Now that we have broken the rules of good theorizing to examine Hildegard in relation to her male contemporaries and far-removed female descendants, the question remains: is this a fruitful avenue of inquiry? By placing Hildegard only on a gendered plane rather ahistorically, we risk obscuring many other factors which contributed to the development of her works. On the other hand, she fits in rather nicely without too much effort. Her music has also proved to be easily transferable to modern methods of performance and arrangement. What does this signify? Does this mean that theories of gendered discourse are correct, and that Hildegard who is a woman happens to have perfected feminine discourse while simultaneously inserting herself into the masculine? Or, does it mean that we have selected only those parts of Hildegard’s writing which fit into our theories?

A theme in Hildegard study which I find to be most instructive is that of her plurality of meaning, and I think it is applicable in this case. Of course Hildegard fits into all our theories, because her meanings fold in upon themselves endlessly, appearing and re-appearing like the many threads in a Webster’s tapestry, so that we may pick and choose which threads we wish to unravel. Above all, it is her fluidity which is her strength. Her ability to both resist and invite interpretation which will ensure that no matter what form of exegesis we apply in the future, she will remain consistently intriguing.

1. Nolan, 1994, 25.
2. Flanagan, 1996, 3.
3. Flanagan, 3.
4. Nolan, 68.
5. Nolan, 68.
6. Flanagan, 3.
7. Nolan, 26.
8. Hildegard, Mystical Writings, 11.
9. 1 Timothy 2:12.
10. Flanagan, xi.
11. Mystical Writings, 5.
12. Nolan, 62.
13. Ibid., 58.
14. Ibid., 62.
15. Ibid., 62.
16. Ibid., 26.
17. Ibid., 26.
18. Mystical Writings, 11.
19. Evans, 1993, 10.
20. Ibid., 10.
21. Ibid., 11.
22. Ibid., 7.
23. Haren, 1992, 114; Evans, 7.
24. Evans, 13.
25. Ibid., 13.
26. Ibid., 35.
27. Ibid., 35.
28. Ibid., 35.
29. Ibid., 35.
30. Nolan, 66.
31. Worman Sur, 1993, 20-1.
32. Flanagan, 176.
33. Nolan, 25.
34. Ibid., 25.
35. Ibid., 22.
36. Irigaray, 1977 (in Cameron), 171.
37. Cameron, 172.
38. Ibid., 173.
39. Ibid.,173.
40. Ibid., 173.
41. Ibid., 174.
42. Ibid., 174.
43. Daly, 1987, 3.
44. Ibid., 202.
45. Ibid., 154.
46. Mystical Writings, 21.
47. Ibid., 21.
48. Daly, 102.
49. Ibid., 100.
50. Worman Sur, 20.
51. Ibid., 22.
52. Nolan, 52.
53. Hildegard, Letter to Bernard of Clairvaux, Nolan, 57.
54. Hildegard, Letter to Elisabeth of Schonau, Mystical Writings, 130.
55. Hildegard, Letter to Pope Anastasius IV, Mystical Writings, 134.
56. Hildegard, Letter to Frederick I, Nolan, 55.
57. Nolan, 58.
58. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, 41, 67.
59. Although Sor Juana also identifies these as spaces for women's intellectual development.
60. Johnson, 1989, 243.
61. Johnson, 245.
62. Scivias, Beginning of First Book, 1.
63. Hildegard, Letter to King Henry II of England, Mystical Writings, 140.
64. Sor Juana, 47.
65. See, for example, O. Sacks' "The Visions of Hildegard" in The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat; and Sabina Flanagan's Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life.
66. Flanagan, 4.
67. Molina, 1994, 85.
68. Ibid., 87.
69. Mystical Writings, 23.
70. Scivias, I, 4, 15.
71. Flanagan, 137.
72. Daly, 176.
73. Johnson, 1989, 243.
74. Scivias, I, 3, 5.
75. Flanagan, 123.
76. Ibid., 122.
77. Ibid., 125.
78. Worman Sur, 9.
79. Scivias, I, 4,1.
80. Ibid., I,4,1.
81. Ibid., I,4,1.
83. Ibid., I,4.
84. Scivias, I,4,16.
85. Hildegard, Letter to her Community, Bowie/Davies, 135.

1. Praise for the virgin (O virga ac diadema)

2. Song to the virgin (O viridissima virga)

3. Antiphon for the virgin (O frondens virga)

4. O you who are illumined (O tu illustrata)

5. Ursula’s virgins (Et ideo puelle)

6. Song to Ecclesia (O orchzis Ecclesia)

7. Song to Ecclesia (Nunc gaudeant materna viscera ecclesia)

8. Antiphon for the Virgin (Hodie aperuit nobis)

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