Chapter Summaries To The Liber Divinorum Operum

The Authorship and Function of the Chapter Summaries
to Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber diuinorum operum

NATHANIEL M. CAMPBELL
Union College, Barbourville, KY
The capitulum (chapter heading or summary) is an often–overlooked part of many

medieval texts.1 Like our medieval forebears, we too make quick use of capitula and
tables of contents as finding aids or for skimming. But despite the ways in which they
thus prime our reading, they rarely capture our main attention, which quickly turns to
the text itself. We often silently assume their utilitarian nature. Yet they are also often
crucial witnesses to the reception and interpretation of a text – obviously so when
composed by someone other than the original author, as was often the case with
ancient texts. But this holds even when the original author composes or directs the
summaries, as they provide him or (too rarely) her an extra opportunity to shape the
reader’s initial approach to the text.
For modern readers of Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber diuinorum operum (LDO), that
approach changed significantly when Albert Derolez and Peter Dronke published
their critical edition of its text.2 One of the most immediately noticeable changes to
A very early version of this study appeared in the newsletter of the International Society of
Hildegard von Bingen Studies, Qualelibet 34:1 (Spring, 2016), pp. 4–7. I would especially like
to thank Barbara Newman and E.J. Richards for their critique and aid.
1
Most scholarship on the genre of capitula has focused on two areas: (1) the development of
titles, subdivisions, and capitula for ancient texts – see, e.g. Bianca-Jeanette Schröder, Titel und
Text. Zur Entwicklung lateinischer Gedichtüberschriften. Mit Untersuchungen zu lateinischen
Buchtiteln, Inhaltsverzeichnissen und anderen Gliederungsmitteln (Berlin, 1999); and (2) the
development of biblical capitulation, stretching from the Gospel canon tables created in the
fourth century to the elaborate layouts of twelfth-century works like Glossa ordinaria and the
thirteenth-century concordances and theological summae – on the latter, see in particular
Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, “Statim invenire: Schools, Preachers, and New
Attitudes to the Page,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. Robert L.
Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, MA, 1992), pp. 201–25. See also the insightful
study of Nigel F. Palmer, “Kapitel und Buch. Zu den Gliederungsprinzipien mittelalterlicher
Bücher,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 23 (1989), 43–88.
2
Hildegardis Bingensis, Liber diuinorum operum, ed. Albert Derolez and Peter Dronke,
CCCM 92 (Turnhout, 1996); citations to the text will be given in-line in the form
Part.Vision.Chapter. All English translations of the main text are my own, from St. Hildegard
of Bingen, The Book of Divine Works, trans. and intro. Nathaniel M. Campbell, Fathers of the
10.1484/J.JML.5.114589 The Journal of Medieval Latin 27 (2017): 069–106 © FHG
69
70 Nathaniel M. Campbell
our understanding of the work was the removal of the capitula to a separate
summarium (“table of contents”) at the front of the work. The printed edition on
which we had relied for so long – Cardinal Mansi’s editio princeps of 1761, reprinted
by Migne in the Patrologia Latina 3 – had been based on the illustrated Lucca
manuscript (Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 1942 [L]; saec. XIII1, the Rhineland), in
which each of the work’s 316 chapters is preceded by a short summary. However,
building on the work of Marianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkötter,4 Derolez
showed that the Ghent manuscript (Ghent, University Library, MS 341 [G]; saec.
XII3–4, Rupertsberg/St. Eucharius–Matthias, Trier)5 was the first fair-copy edition of
the text.6 That initial text did not contain chapter summaries, nor even at first chapter
divisions, which were only added later during editing, some being revised several
times.7 Only after final editing were the chapter summaries written separately in the
Rupertsberg scriptorium.8
In their “Introduction” to the CCCM edition of the LDO, as well as in the
apparatus to the Capitula, both Derolez and Dronke noted certain aspects of this
added summarium that suggest that it may not entirely be the words of Hildegard
herself. Derolez writes:
It has been silently assumed that the Capitula are Hildegard’s work. Only a close
analysis would permit us to test this assumption. On the one hand the composing of
this Table of Contents supposes a thorough understanding of Hildegard’s text. On the
other, the theological viewpoint in the Capitula looks more conventional than the one
reflected by Hildegard’s text. In the Genesis commentary in particular the Capitula
systematize the text by mentioning for every chapter the type of exegesis given: littera,
Church, Medieval Continuation, vol. 18 (Washington, D.C., in press, expected 2018); all
translations from the capitula are my own, from my edition published online with the
International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies, which includes digital reproductions
of the famous Lucca illustrations: http://www.hildegard-society.org/p/liber-divinorum-
operum.html
3
Stephani Baluzii miscellanea novo ordine digesta, ed. J.D. Mansi (Lucca, 1761), 2:335–452;
S. Hildegardis Abbatissae Opera Omnia, PL 197:741A–1038C.
4
Marianna Schrader and Adelgundis Führkötter, Die Echtheit des Schrifttums der heiligen
Hildegard von Bingen (Cologne, 1956), pp. 47–48.
5
The manuscript has been fully digitized and can be consulted at:
http://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000821881
6
Albert Derolez, “The Genesis of Hildegard of Bingen’s ‘Liber Divinorum Operum’: The
Codicological Evidence,” in Litterae Textuales: Texts and Manuscripts. Essays Presented to G.I.
Lieftinck, ed. J.P. Gumbert and M.J.M. de Haan (Amsterdam, 1972), 2:22–33; and LDO,
pp. lxxxvi–xcvii.
7
LDO, pp. xcii–xciii.
8
LDO, p. xcv.
The Chapter Summaries of Hildegard’s Liber diuinorum operum 71
allegoria, moralitas. These terms do not occur in the text itself but were added
afterwards in its margins. Also, the appreciation given in the Capitula to some of
Hildegard’s chapters sounds somewhat strange in the mouth of our humble author:
subtilis descriptio (I, i, 4), diligens … expressio (I, iv, 144–145), subtili acumine
describuntur (II, i, 7), cum eleganti expositione (II, i, 180) etc. It is, however, possible
that Hildegard considered these expressions not as self–praise, but as praise of the
Holy Ghost, the real author of the work.9
Despite Dronke’s similarly hesitant note on the use of the phrase “cum eleganti
expositione” in the summary of II.1.39, 10 neither editor was prepared to give a
definitive statement on the summary’s authorship. This study engages, first, in the
“close analysis” for which Derolez called, to reveal the many pieces of evidence that
argue strongly against Hildegard’s authorship. These can be grouped into four
categories: vocabulary and expression; interpretation; technical aspects of the
compositional process; and style. Second, I will consider who might have authored
the chapter summaries in her stead. Finally, I will explore the function of the capitula
and their authorship in the context of the construction of Hildegard’s legacy in the
final decade of her life.
A Codicological Prolegomenon
A preliminary sketch of the LDO’s manuscript origins and history is necessary to
frame this study.11 About three quarters of the work had been copied from the original
wax tablets into the quires of the Ghent manuscript before the death of Volmar,
Hildegard’s longtime secretary and provost of her abbey on the Rupertsberg, in 1173.
The remainder of the text was copied and extensive corrections and editing carried
out in the next year or two, with the assistance of Abbot Ludwig of St. Eucharius in
Trier and monks of his abbey, in particular Godfrey of Kahler; as well as Wezelin,
Hildegard’s nephew and provost of St. Andreas in Cologne, as Hildegard notes in the
Epilogue that survives in the Riesenkodex (Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek,
MS 2 [R]; saec. XII4, Rupertsberg; fol. 308rb). 12 Only then could the chapter
summaries have been composed and transcribed onto thirteen leaves of two octavo
9
LDO, pp. xciv–xcv; to Derolez’s list of less-than-humble phrases should be added diligenter
describatur (III.5.1). Derolez cited chapter summaries by Part, Vision, line number; I will cite
by Part.Vision.Chapter number, to allow for readier cross-reference to the main text.
10
LDO, p. lxvi.
11
I rely above all on the work of Albert Derolez: “The Genesis of Hildegard of Bingen’s ‘Liber
Divinorum Operum’,” pp. 22–33; LDO, pp. lxxxvi–xcvii; and “The Manuscript Transmission
of Hildegard of Bingen’s Writings: The State of the Problem,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The
Context of her Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke (London, 1998),
pp. 17–28.
12
The manuscript has been fully digitized: http://dokumentserver.hlb-wiesbaden.de/HS_2/
quires (the last three leaves of the second quire, left unused, were later excised, likely
after binding). These remained separate from the Ghent manuscript for some
considerable time before eventually being sown into its front after the manuscript was
transferred from Hildegard’s abbey to St. Eucharius in Trier. 13 As will be shown
below, the composition of the capitula must have taken place between 1174 and 1176,
before additional copies of the work could be made. In this respect, Hildegard’s
scriptorium appears to have followed with the LDO a production process established
with her other works. As Derolez has suggested, the first draft of the summaries of
Hildegard’s second major work, the Liber vite meritorum, were likewise drawn up
separately from and after the work’s own first fair copy. In subsequent copies, the
summaries were then distributed before their respective parts, rather then simply
being copied en masse at the opening of the work.14 Most of the manuscripts of
Hildegard’s first work, Scivias, also follow this pattern, including its portion in the
Riesenkodex (fols. 1v–135v). Moreover, the exemplar would have been kept
unbound for a time, to allow for subsequent copies to be written by multiple scribes
working simultaneously.15
Two such copies of the LDO from this period survive: the Troyes manuscript and
the Riesenkodex. Both of these preface each of the work’s three parts with their
respective chapter summaries, and both were copied from the Ghent original. The
Riesenkodex commands our special attention because it uniquely contains the
Epilogue in which Hildegard memorializes her helpers in finishing the LDO. This
manuscript, designed to contain the aging saint’s opera omnia theologica, was a
composite effort, with different scribes working simultaneously on its various parts.16
13
LDO, pp. xcv–xcvi; an early ownership mark for St. Eucharius appears on the opening page
of the main text’s Prologue (p. 28), together with the dirt gathered by the first folio of the
codex, indicating that the summary quires that now open the manuscript did not always
belong there.
14
Albert Derolez, “Deux notes concernant Hildegarde de Bingen: (II) La nature du manuscrit
du «Liber vitae meritorum» conservé à Trêves,” Scriptorium 22 (1973), 293–95; Derolez
applies this logic to all three visionary works and their manuscripts produced in
the Rupertsberg scriptorium in “The Manuscript Transmission of Hildegard of Bingen’s
Writings,” pp. 18–20.
15
Indeed, the Troyes manuscript of the LDO (Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 683
[saec. XII4, Rupertsberg/Clairvaux], fols. 1–110) was written by three main scribes – one
copying Parts I and II of the work (fols. 1–78), and two others sharing Part III (fols. 79–110)
– suggesting simultaneous copying from an unbound exemplar.
16
See especially Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit, pp. 154–79; with key correctives to its
design and dating in Lieven Van Acker, “Der Briefwechsel der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen
(Fortsetzung),” Revue Bénédictine 99 (1989), 118–54, at pp. 125–34, who concludes based on
the careful construction of the letter collection that the manuscript was produced between
When Hand 3 copied the LDO quires, the Epilogue had not yet been written. Only
later did the Corrector of R’s LDO squeeze it into the empty space left at the end of
the main text on fol. 308r, the Epilogue’s text spilling over the carefully ruled margins
as the scribe worked furiously to fit it in. Meanwhile, the original scribe of the LDO
had continued on the verso side of fol. 308 with the next text planned for the
collection – a mélange of writings opening with Hildegard’s famous apologia for
music in a letter to the prelates of Mainz. 17 This suggests both that the Ghent
manuscript was still at the Rupertsberg, to serve as the exemplar for corrections; and
that the Epilogue was not yet written in the winter of 1178–1179 when Hildegard
penned her fierce and beautiful letter in her fight against an interdict imposed upon
her abbey for having given burial to a man once excommunicated by the Mainz clergy.
Although Herwegen thought that the Epilogue might have existed independently for
some time before this, Derolez finds it unlikely that the original scribe of R’s LDO
would not have had access to it.18 Instead, Hildegard probably composed the Epilogue
in the final months of her life, perhaps while surveying the progress of the
Riesenkodex. Only thereafter could the Ghent manuscript – its capitula quires still
bundled separately from the rest of the codex – have left the Rupertsberg to be
entered into the library of St. Eucharius in Trier, perhaps in the hands of Godfrey of
Kahler as he returned to take up his post as the monastery’s vicar. There it remained
until the French spirited it away after Napoleon’s invasion of the Rhineland.
1177–1180, under the direction of Guibert of Gembloux; see also Derolez’s supporting
evidence for that conclusion in LDO, p. xcix.
17
Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit, pp. 158–59; Van Acker, “Der Briefwechsel,” p. 134,
n. 218; LDO, pp. xcviii–xcix. The only rubricated title for this section of the manuscript (fols.
308v–314ra) is Ad prelatos Moguntienses propter diuina nobis interdicta (fol. 308va), though
each of the ten texts that it comprises begins with a rubricated initial. The first text is indeed
the letter to the prelates of Mainz (Ep. 23 in Epistolarium I, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91
[Turnhout, 1991], pp. 61–66); of the remaining nine, three are identifiable as letters, while
the others were printed by L. Van Acker and M. Klaes-Hachmöller in Epistolarium III
(CCCM 91B, Turnhout, 2001) in a catch-all class called meditationes (numbered 374 and
later). In the order they appear in the manuscript, they are Ep. 385, 387, 292, 308, 386, 388,
373, 381, and 378. One additional text follows on fols. 314rb–317ra, a meditation on the
prophetic irruption of diuina claritas into salvation history that Migne printed along with the
previous ten (all together in PL 197:218C–243B); now numbered Ep. 389 in the modern
edition, it is written in the later hand that copied Theodoric’s Vita S. Hildegardis immediately
following (fols. 317ra–327v); the scribe left space at the beginning (top of fol. 314rb) for a
rubric that was never added.
18
Ildefons Herwegen, “Les collaborateurs de sainte Hildegarde,” Revue Bénédictine 21 (1904),
192–203, 302–15, 381–403, esp. at pp. 309–10; Derolez’s assessment in LDO, p. ci.
The Evidence against Hildegard’s Authorship
The summary author uses several recurring expressions that are foreign to Hildegard’s
own style. The most distinctive is his frequent use of the conjunction uel in the
meaning of et, both singularly and in the correlative. Though there might occasionally
be a grey area between uel and et, 19 one specific occurrence makes our author’s
peculiar usage clear. In I.2.35, in reference to the place of the sun amid the cosmic
spheres, he writes, “uel quid ipse uel radii eius significent” – “what both it and its rays
signify” (LDO, p. 8.96). Yet the summaries of the chapters immediately before and
after, which treat of the other six planete (three heavenly bodies above the sun in
I.2.34, three below in I.2.36) use tam … quam, with passive verbs (designetur and
figuretur) paired with per, to express the same thought (LDO, p. 8.93–98). Other
instances reveal that, even when copying Hildegard’s text nearly word for word, the
summary author might still make this substitution; so e.g. I.2.26, “uirtutis effectus
hominem ad iusticiam uel rectitudinem celestium perducit” – “the effect of virtue is to
lead humankind to justice and the rightness of heaven” (LDO, p. 7.73–73), where
Hildegard writes “operationes earum [sc. uirtutum] … hominem ad quamque
iusticiam et ad rectitudinem celestium pariter perducunt” – “the workings of [the
virtues] … lead humankind equally to all justice and to the rightness of heaven”
(LDO, p. 87.3 and 6–8). Similarly, the summary for I.4.74 includes the phrase “ad
receptionem uel emissionem ciborum” in place of Hildegard’s “ad receptionem et ad
emissionem ciborum” – “in the reception and digestion of food” (LDO, pp. 21.310–
11 and 205.2–3); and I.4.79 reads, “fortitudo uel petulantia renum” – “the strength
and wantonness of the loins” (LDO, pp. 22.343), where Hildegard writes, “In renibus
autem, in quibus et fortitudo et lubrica petulantia diffunditur” – “The loins, moreover,
in which both strength and wanton frivolity are diffused” (LDO, p. 209.1–2). This
peculiar usage of uel occurs in nearly ten percent of the chapter summaries.20
Another area in which the summary author betrays divergences in vocabulary and
expression from Hildegard is in describing symbolic meanings or correspondences.
For example, he uses the indeclinable noun instar – “image” or “form” – where
Hildegard would use imago, forma, or simply an adverb like uelut or quasi to describe
symbolic forms or images. Hildegard never uses the term instar in the LDO, but the
summary author uses it twelve times; notable examples are I.2.17 (together with
effigies in I.2.20, figura in I.2.23, and forma in I.2.28 to describe the animal–head
19
E.g. the summary for III.5.25 (p. 42.108–9): “et alii aliis magistri uel archiepiscopi in
diuersis locis superponentur” – “and different masters and/or archbishops will replace the
others in various locations.”
20
So the summaries for I.1.2, I.1.8, I.2.7, I.2.26, I.2.35, I.4.9, I.4.13, I.4.18, I.4.30, I.4.41, I.4.43,
I.4.51, I.4.56, I.4.74, I.4.79, I.4.95, I.4.97, II.1.2, II.1.7, II.1.13, III.5.2, III.5.6, and III.5.28; with
border cases in I.4.8, III.5.25, and III.5.31.
winds: LDO, pp. 6.50 and 55 and 7.66 and 80 – Hildegard also uses uariatio in these
descriptions, though with different terms), I.4.11 (p. 13.14, for Hildegard’s in
similitudine, p. 143.3), II.1.33 and III.2.14 (pp. 31.147 and 36.62, where its sense is
figura), and III.2.1 and III.5.4 (pp. 34.1 and 39.12, in place of Hildegard’s sicut,
p. 353.2, and quasi, p. 410.1). Similarly, the summaries sometimes use the adverb uice
to describe correspondences between the universal macrocosm and the human
microcosm; so e.g. in I.4.82, “homo … ossa sine medulla lapidum uice, ossa cum
medullis uice arborum habebat” – “the human person … has bones without marrow
in place of the stones, and bones with marrow in place of the trees” (LDO, p. 22.355–
56). Hildegard, however, does not employ this usage, commonly choosing instead the
adverbs ut, uelut, and sicut to express the correspondences, e.g. for this passage “ossa
autem ipsius sine suco medulle ut lapides sunt, ossa uero cum medulla uelut arbores
existunt” – “his bones that are without the juice of marrow are like the stones, while
the bones with marrow are like the trees” (LDO, p. 212.3–4). This usage appears also
in the summaries for I.4.23 and I.4.27 (LDO, pp. 14.94 and 15.116). Another
expression for such symbolic relationships in the summaries is the verb insinuo –
“impart [meaning],” usually in place of designo (e.g. I.4.31, I.4.86, and I.4.93; LDO,
pp. 16.140, 23.379 and 24.415) or manifesto (III.4.2, p. 37.6). Hildegard uses the term
in this sense only once in the LDO, at III.5.6 (p. 414.8), on the allegorical signification
of Noah’s ark.
At other points, too, the summary author adopts a synonym in place of a word
used in Hildegard’s text or more common in her vocabulary, e.g. levus for sinister –
“left” (I.2.41, I.4.97; LDO, pp. 8.11 and 25.434; 108.12 and 230.3); ritus for mores and
disciplina – “manner” or “way of life” (III.2.4; pp. 35.21 and 357.17–19); or magicus –
“magical,” for diabolicus – “devilish” (III.5.28 and 32; pp. 42.122 and 43.139; 448.6
and 454.4). Some of the subtler changes might simply reflect another stage in
Hildegard’s authorized editing process, e.g. in I.4.50, flatus … percurrit (singular) for
Hildegard’s flatus … discurrunt (plural) – “blast(s) … run(s) throughout” (LDO,
pp. 18.212–13 and 184.4–5); or in III.5.10, in deterius concidant for Hildegard’s in
deterius descendant – “fall into a worse state” (pp. 40.43 and 426.7). Other
substitutions add specificity, perhaps as part of summary process, e.g. tempore
autumpni – “in the autumn season,” for Hildegard’s circumlocution in I.4.26, “in inicio
frigoris, cum hiemps appropinquare uidetur” – “at the first sign of cold when winter
seems near” (LDO, pp. 15.110–11 and 159.6–7).
Another specific gloss for I.4.26, however, both goes beyond the allusive nature of
Hildegard’s text and avoids her common terminology. In her threefold scheme that
relates cosmos to body and both then to soul, she describes a sordidam spumam –
“foul foam” (likely of decaying organic matter) produced by the earth in a purgative
cycle as winter approaches, which corresponds first to sinus congestion and then to
the sweat (sudor) given off by the flesh in pleasure: “quoniam, cum per fortitudinem
corpus coagulationem conceptionis sue retractat peccando, tunc racionalis anima
refrigescit carni consentiendo” – “for when the body in its might reengages the
coagulation of its conception by sinning, then the rational soul cools in consenting to
the flesh” (LDO I.4.26, p. 160.32–34).21 While coagulatio is Hildegard’s frequent term
for the “curdling” of man’s and woman’s seeds in the conception of the fetus,22 spuma
is her favored term for semen, often sourced in salvation history in the mouth of the
devilish serpent.23 The summary author, however, uses neither term, choosing instead
to gloss the process thus: “eodem modo caro ueneria exudatione exsiccari …
comprobetur” – “in the same way, the flesh assents to being dried out of its sexual
secretion” (LDO, p. 15.112–14).24 His bowdlerization of Hildegard’s discussion of
sexuality is even blunter in II.1.9, where he renders her allusive description of
homosexual activity (through the voice of the devil) explicitly as, “horror …
sodomitici criminis” – “the horrible crime of sodomy” (LDO, p. 28.44), 25 while
simultaneously eliding her focus on it as the devil’s plot to end human procreation.26
21
On Hildegard’s use of sudor as a specifically sexual fluid, see Barbara Newman, Sister of
Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley, CA, 1997), p. 111.
22
See Peter Dronke, “Problemata Hildegardiana,” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 16 (1981), 97–
131, at pp. 114–16; and Newman, Sister of Wisdom, pp. 133–42.
23
LDO I.4.105, on John 1.9 (p. 257.290–92): “cum spuma per naturam hominis mulsa fuerit,
per igneam scintillam anime caro et sanguis pleniter efficitur” – “when the [semen’s] foam has
been teased out by human nature, it is wholly transformed into flesh and blood by the soul’s
fiery spark.” Hildegard’s description of ejaculation is clearer in her scientific work, Cause et
Cure 2.57, ed. Laurence Moulinier and Rainer Berndt (Berlin, 2003), p. 59: “Nam sanguis
hominis, in ardore et calore libidinis feruens, spumam se eicit, quod nos semen dicimus, uelut
olla aliqua ad ignem posita spumam de feruore ignis de aqua emittit” – “For when a person’s
blood boils in the ardor and heat of sexual desire, it ejects itself as a foam that we call semen,
as when a pot placed on the fire produces foam from the water because of the fire’s intensity.”
She provides a symbolically rich description of the serpent’s spume, via its absence in the
Virgin, in LDO III.5.18 (p. 438.15–17): “Floriditas autem uinee Sabaoth, que de flore uirge
Aaron processit, que per spumam serpentis non incaluit, quando filius meus in cruce passus
est exaruit” – “Yet the blooming of the vineyard of hosts – the bloom that came forth from the
flower of Aaron’s staff that was not burned by the serpent’s spume – withered when my Son
suffered on the cross.”
24
The editorial apparatus notes of the phrase ueneria exudatione, “Incertum an haec locutio
Hildegardi tribui possit” – “It is uncertain whether this expression can be attributed to
Hildegard” (LDO, p. 15).
25
This capitulum is the only instance of the term sodomiticus in the corpus of Hildegard’s
works.
26
LDO II.1.9 (p. 277.10–14): “In sufflatu suo [sc. serpentis] quoque habuit, ut processio
filiorum hominum interiret, ubi uiri in uiros exarserunt turpia operantes. Vnde et ualde
gauisus clamabat: Maxima blasphemia illi est qui hominem formauit, quod homo in forma sua
euanescit naturali usu mulierum abiecto” – “In [the serpent’s] puffery he thought that the
Three other substitutions demand particular attention because they pertain to
terms fundamental to Hildegard’s thought in the LDO. In the summary for I.4.21 – a
nodal chapter in her explication of the relationship between cosmos, body, and soul –
our author substitutes the term racio – “reason,” for Hildegard’s racionalitas –
“rationality.”27 Yet Hildegard almost never speaks of racio in this sense, instead making
the concept of racionalitas a touchstone of her theological anthropology, all the while
shot through with creative vitality. As Dronke observes, “[N]othing in earlier
tradition would prepare us for Hildegard’s spectacular expressions [of racionalitas] in
the LDO. … By an imaginative feat Hildegard made what originated as an abstract
attribute of the human soul into a witness and symbol of cosmic sympatheia.”28 That
human–cosmic linkage lies within the divine foreknowledge that first planned and
then executed it, as discussed for example in Hildegard’s commentary on the Prologue
to John’s Gospel in I.4.105 (LDO, pp. 248–54). Yet in summarising her discussion of
John 1.3–4, the capitulum describes the pre–created latency of all creation within
God’s arte – “skill,” rather than using Hildegard’s concept of his prescientia –
“foreknowledge.”29 Human rationality echoes divine rationality when it plans and
advance of human children would end when men burned against men while committing
shameful acts. So overjoyed, he cried, ‘His is the greatest blasphemy who formed Man,
because Man fades away in his form when he rejects the natural company of women!’” In the
same chapter summary, our author also describes the serpent as hostis in place of Hildegard’s
inimicus (LDO, pp. 28.42 and 277.28).
27
LDO I.4.21 (p. 152.5–9): “Ita etiam eodem modo experientia celestium et terrestrium
anime adest, et racionalitas, qua celestia et terrestria sentit, ipsi infixa est. Nam et sicut
uerbum Dei omnia pertransiuit creando, ita et anima totum corpus pertransit cum ipso
operando” – “So too in this way the soul experiences the things of heaven and earth, and the
rationality by which it perceives those things of heaven and earth is fixed within it. For as the
Word of God permeated all things in creating, so the soul permeates the whole body in
operating with it.” The summary reads (p. 14.83–86): “et quia etiam secundum ista principale
quiddam, id est racio, quo celestia appetat, et uires alie, quibus corpus administret, anime
adtribute sunt” – “and that, in accordance with these, to the soul is attributed something
fundamental, that is, reason, by which it strives for the things of heaven, and the other powers,
by which it administers the body.”
28
LDO, p. xxxi; see also Fabio Chávez Alvarez, »Die brennende Vernunft«: Studien zur
Semantik der »raitonalitas« bei Hildegard von Bingen (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1991),
pp. 131–221.
29
LDO, I.4.105 (pp. 252.147–253.150): “quia omnia que create sunt in ipsius creatoris
racione apparuerunt, quoniam in prescientia eius fuerunt; non tamen illi coeterna, sed ab ipso
prescita et preuisa ac preordinata” – “For all things that were created appeared in the reason
of their Creator, because they existed in his foreknowledge. Yet they are not coeternal to him
– rather, they are foreknown, foreseen, and foreordained by him.” The summary reads
(p. 26.472–73): “de creaturis, quomodo in arte creatoris sine coeternitate ipsius erant
creatively enacts within its own scientia – a term that for Hildegard refers most
fundamentally to the faculty of conscience and its distinction between good and evil.30
Thus, even more essential a concept to the LDO is the idea of opus – “work” itself,
together with its verb operor and its extension operatio – “working” or “activity.”31 The
entire work is grounded in God’s activity of creating the world – an office of enacting
transferred to humankind by dint of creation in the divine (incarnate) image and
(rational) likeness. So one might be surprised to find the summary author in I.2.26
(quoted above for its use of the conjunction uel) replace Hildegard’s use of operatio
with the philosophical term effectus – “effect.”
This tendency to omit key terms shows up again in the capitulum for II.1.43,
Hildegard’s exegesis of Gen. 1.25–26 and the creation of homo in the image and
likeness of God. The summary author writes, “homo secundum corpus ad imaginem
humanitatis filii Dei, quam ab eterno ex uirgine assumpturum presciuerat, et
secundum animam per scientiam uel imitationem boni ad similitatem diuinitatis
factus sit” – “as to the body, Man was made in the image of the Son of God’s
humanity, which God foreknew from eternity that he would assume from a Virgin;
and as to the soul, he was made in the likeness of divinity through knowledge and
imitation of the good” (LDO, pp. 32.196–33.200). Though this summary represents
accurately Hildegard’s thought, it fails to use key images that course through her
discussion of the divine image and likeness, not only in this passage but throughout
the LDO. The image is the tunica or uestimentum (tunic or garment) of the incarnate
Son of God, while the likeness is specifically racionalitas (the passage is in voce Dei):32
Qui una uis unius substantie diuinitatis in tribus personis sumus, faciamus hominem ad
imaginem nostram, id est secundum tunicam illam, que in utero uirginis germinabit,
quam persona filii pro salute hominis induens, de utero illius, ipsa integra permanente,
exibit, et a qua tunica diuinitas numquam recedet … Faciamus quoque eum ad
antequam essent in seipsis” – “of creation, and how it existed within the Creator’s skill
without coeternity to him before it came into being in itself.”
30
See LDO III.4.14 (pp. 402–5); and Christel Meier, “Operationale Kosmologie.
Bemerkungen zur Konzeption der Arbeit bei Hildegard von Bingen,” in Tiefe des Gotteswissens
– Schönheit der Sprachgestalt bei Hildegard von Bingen, ed. Margot Schmidt (Stuttgart-Bad
Cannstatt, 1995), pp. 49–83, at 64–65.
31
Because opus is so fundamental a concept in Hildegard’s theology, the literature on it is
extensive; see in particular Meier, “Operationale Kosmologie;” and Otto Betz,
“›Opus/Operatio‹ und ›Discretio‹: Schlüsselbegriffe im Denken Hildegards,” in Hildegard
von Bingen. Prophetin durch die Zeiten, ed. Äbtissin Edeltraud Forster (Freiburg im Breisgau,
1997), pp. 238–48.
32
On the indumentum or tunica of the Incarnation, see also I.4.14, I.4.76, I.4.100, I.4.105
passim (the commentary on the Prologue to John’s Gospel), II.1.15, III.1.2, III.2.9, III.4.5,
and III.5.4.
similitudinem nostram, ut scienter et sapienter ea intelligat et discernat, que in quinque
sensibus suis operaturus est, ita ut etiam per racionalitatem uite sue, que intra ipsum
abscondetur et quam nulla creatura in corpore manens uidere potest, preesse sciat
piscibus … et uolatilibus … et bestiis indomitis … quia racionalitas hominis omnia
hec precellet (LDO II.1.43, p. 328.25–40).
Let us, who are the one force of divinity’s one substance in three persons, make Man in
our image, that is, according to that tunic that will sprout in the Virgin’s womb, which
[tunic] the person of the Son will put on for Man’s salvation to go forth from her
womb as she herself remains untouched; and from which tunic divinity will never
withdraw. … Let us also make him in our likeness, that he might knowledgeably and
wisely understand and discern what he is to enact with his five senses, so that through
the rationality of his life, which is hidden within him and which no embodied creature
can see, he may know that he is to rule the fish … and the birds … and the untamed
beasts …, for human rationality surpasses all these things.
This passage is the fundamental exegetical source for Hildegard’s theological
anthropology, and so it is again difficult to see why she would have departed from her
consistent imagery, if she were the author of the summary. Instead, the summarist’s
digests of each chapter appear to be a first reader’s notes, assessing Hildegard’s ideas
in light of a less idiosyncratic theological vocabulary and background.
One particular aspect of the summaries shows this interpretive assessment clearly:
the occasional invocation of new or different intertexts. For example, Hildegard’s
description of Jewish blindness in III.5.18 (LDO, p. 238.17–18: “oculi Iudeorum in
umbra mortis grauati fuerunt” – “the eyes of the Jews were heavy in the shadow of
death”) draws on the “heavy eyes” of the disciples in Matt. 26.43, but the summary
author invokes instead the scandalum of the crucified Christ in 1 Cor. 1.23: “[Iudei]
qui scandalo Christi obcecati” – “the Jews, blinded by the stumbling block of Christ”
(LDO, p. 41.80). Meanwhile, in the summary for I.4.103, the phrase, “corpus suum
sensificat et … mouet” – “[the soul] gives sensation to and moves its body” (LDO,
p. 26.462) echoes passages in Claudianus Mamertius and Augustine (as indicated in
Dronke’s apparatus fontium), though Hildegard uses neither verb in her actual
discussion of the soul’s activity. One of the most interesting examples comes in the
allegorical (ecclesiological) interpretation of Gen. 1.10–11 in II.1.33; Hildegard
writes:
Viuens terra ecclesia est, fructum iusticie cum doctrina apostolorum pariens, sicut ipsi
filiis suis in inicio predicauerunt, ut quasi herba in uiriditate recte fidei essent, quam in
semine uerborum Dei percepissent; et ut etiam fructifere arbores secundum legem Dei
fierent, ita ut in semine eorum fornicationes et adulteria non perpetrarentur, sed in
recta natiuitate filios super terram parerent (LDO, p. 306.4–10).
The Church is the living earth, bearing the fruit of justice with the apostles’ teaching.
For they preached to her children in the beginning that they should be like vegetation
in the viridity of right faith, which they perceived in the seed of God’s words; and that
they should be fruit-bearing trees according to God’s law, not to commit fornications
and adulteries in their seed, but to bear children upon the earth with a righteous birth.
The summary makes several striking departures from this:
Quod uterus ecclesie instar cuiusdam terre et herbam uirentem in simplicitate fidelium
paruulorum et ligna pomifera in robusta operatione perfectorum modo germinet
(LDO, p. 31.147–49).
The womb of the Church, like a kind of earth, sprouts now green vegetation in the
simplicity of the little ones of the faith, and fruit-bearing trees in the powerful action of
those who are perfected.
On the one hand, in specifying that the earth corresponds to the uterus ecclesie – “the
Church’s womb,” the summarist invokes an image familiar from Hildegard’s first
work, Scivias II.3, but absent from the LDO passage.33 On the other hand, he seems to
construe either a contrast or a progression from the vegetation’s “simplicity of the
little ones of the faith” (with an added allusion to Matt. 18.4) to the trees’ “powerful
action of those who are perfected,” wholly omitting any notice of the apostolic
teaching on marriage.
The added allusion to the Scivias is, in one sense, not at all surprising, as it is the
one intertext that Hildegard cites by name at several points in the LDO, because she is
either revising or expanding visions first reported there. The first instance relates the
famous “Cosmic Egg” of Scivias I.334 to the cosmic spheres described in LDO I.2, a
fact the summary dutifully notes:
Quare in libro Sciuias spera mundi in figura oui, et in isto in similitudine rote ostensa
uel descripta sit (LDO I.2.3, p. 5.8–9).
How in the book Scivias the sphere of the world was shown and described in the figure
of an egg, and in this one, it is in the likeness of a wheel.
The second comes in the work’s final vision (LDO III.5.15–33, pp. 432–57), which
contains a detailed prophetic account of the time to come from Hildegard’s age until
the advent of the Antichrist. Hildegard builds this historical program with reference to
the five beasts that represent, in a much more cursory fashion, the five ages to come in
Scivias III.11.35 Yet strangely, the author of the chapter summaries completely omits
these references.
33
Hildegardis Bingensis, Scivias, ed. Adelgundis Führkötter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM
43–43A (Turnhout, 1978), in 43:134–58; Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Columba Hart
and Jane Bishop, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, 1990), pp. 169–85.
34
Scivias, ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43, pp. 40–50; trans. Hart and Bishop,
pp. 93–99.
35
Scivias III.11.1–6, ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43A, pp. 576–79; trans. Hart and
Bishop, pp. 493–95.
Several other, more technical anomalies give us a glimpse of the summarist’s
working methods as he made his way through Hildegard’s text in order to compose
the capitula. The best known of these is in the alternative chapter numbering adopted
by him for the work’s opening vision (I.1).36 Instead of following the capitulation
marked in the margins of the Ghent manuscript during the editing stage, he splits
chapter four into two parts, making the discussion of love of God and neighbor its
own chapter five. The chapter numbering in that vision is then off by one between the
summary quires and the main text until the summarist combines chapters twelve and
thirteen into a single chapter thirteen. Because the Lucca scribe chose to insert a
summary before each chapter, he divided the text to follow the revised organization of
the summarist. There is, however, another discrepancy that has so far gone
unremarked, amid Hildegard’s exegesis of the sixth day of creation in II.1. The
summary listed for chapter forty five (concerning Gen. 1.29–31 and John 4.34; LDO,
p. 33.206–13) is for what is marked in the text in all manuscripts as the second half of
chapter forty four (pp. 333.75–336.138); while the summary listed for chapter forty
six (the moral interpretation of the sixth day, p. 33.214–17) comprises in the text
chapters forty five and forty six (pp. 336–40). This fluidity in numbering might
suggest that our summarist began reading the manuscript quires before the
capitulation was wholly complete, or that he was attentive to ways in which, in
Derolez’s words, it “did not give entire satisfaction.”37
Further clues to that reading and summary process can be seen in several scribal
anomalies, as in the descriptions of the principal winds in the summaries for I.2.
Normally, Hildegard denotes the direction of the winds with an adjective, i.e. uentus
orientalis, uentus occidentalis, uentus australis, and uentus septentrionalis (eastern,
western, southern, and northern winds, respectively); and for the most part, our
summary author follows suit (e.g. in I.2.17, I.2.23, and I.2.28; LDO, pp. 6–7). He slips
up once, however, in describing the west wind in I.2.20 as principalis uentus occidentis
– “principal wind of the west” (LDO, p. 6.55) – a slip noticed by the Lucca scribe, who
sensibly changed it to occidentalis, in line with Hildegard’s text. While reading along in
the Ghent manuscript and composing his chapter summary, our author’s eye skipped
between two lines, causing him to adopt the noun occidentis (in the phrase, in plaga
occidentis – “in the region of the west”) from the line immediately above the phrase
principalis uentus occidentalis on p. 56. Another slip in I.4.41 led to a surprising error
that was not caught by any of the subsequent scribes or editors: the summary speaks
of teeth, “qui cauernosi sunt nec medullam habent” – “which have cavities but not
marrow” (LDO, p. 17.179–80), while Hildegard wrote, “Dentes etenim hominis
cauernati non sunt nec molliciem medulle habent – “Furthermore, a person’s teeth
36
See Derolez’s discussion in LDO, pp. xcv and cvi.
37
LDO, p. xciv.
are not hollow nor have the softness of marrow” (LDO, p. 176.10–11). 38 The
substitution of cauernosi for cauernati and the omission of the crucial non is the result
of an over-hasty reading of p. 148 in the manuscript: cauernati is split between two
lines, with –na– running past the ruling into the inner margin, and –ti looking nearly
identical to the abbreviated non (less the latter’s abbreviation mark) at the beginning
of the next line.
The fact that the summarist was thus reading through the text whilst composing
his capitula is bolstered by another slight shift in vocabulary, in the terms used to
indicate that an image or idea has been mentioned previously. Of the variety of terms
that Hildegard adopts, all derive from verbs of speaking – the majority of occurrences
use prefatus, predictus, or supradictus (aforesaid or said above). The summary author
does occasionally use these or similar terms,39 but his most frequent adjective derives
from a verb of writing: prescriptus (written above) which appears in the summaries for
I.1.3, I.2.11, III.3.3, III.4.1, III.4.10, and III.4.13 (LDO, pp. 3.13, 6.29, and 37.10–
38.44). This reflects the shift from Hildegard’s spoken dictation to a summary writer
whose engagement is with a written text. This slight remove of our author from the
original compositional process can also be seen in another shift, marking him (and us)
as Hildegard’s audience. Except when explicating a scriptural voice (e.g. I.4.105, on
John 1.14; LDO, pp. 263–64), Hildegard never speaks of humankind in the first
person. The summary author, however, lapses at several points, e.g. in I.2.10 (“quid
hoc in nobis figuraliter ostendat” –“what this shows figuratively in us,” LDO, p. 6.27–
28); I.4.8 (“quid in nobis designent” – “what this signifies in us,” p. 13.36); I.4.41 (“in
nobis exprimatur” – “expressed in us,” p. 17.180); and I.4.43 (“in nobis significatio” –
“the signification within us,” p. 17.185–86). In each of those instances, Hildegard
speaks of what the macrocosm signifies in homine – but the summary author now
thinks of that homo as himself and Hildegard’s other readers.
38
Even Derolez and Dronke neglected to insert the necessary but missing non. Subsequent
scribes were generally attentive to errors or nonsensical readings, e.g. R’s addition of lucidique
to I.4.6 (p. 12.24); the correction of I.4.89’s paraphrase of Ps. 101.12, with G’s uelocem
corrected to uelocem cursum in R and uelocitatem in L (p. 23.393); and the difficult place of
apostoli in II.1.21 (“uerba David in Psalmo XXVIII apostoli et doctrine consona,” which one
can construe as “the words of David in Psalm 28, which befit also the apostle’s teaching”),
which prompted the corrector of L to rephrase as, “uerba David in Psalmo XXVIII prophete,
apostoli et doctores consona uoce” (p. 29.104–5) – “the prophets, apostles, and teachers
[speak] with one voice the words of David in Psalm 28.”
39
E.g. predictus (I.2.13 and I.2.15, LDO, p. 6.34 and 40, in the latter example substituting for
Hildegard’s prefatus); and supradictus (I.2.20 and I.2.31, pp. 6.56 and 7.85, in place of
predictus). He also occasionally uses terms that refer to the showing of each vision, e.g.
preostensus (I.2.46, p. 9.127, in place of Hildegard’s predictus); ostensus (III.2.4 and III.3.3;
pp. 35.18 and 37.11); and premonstratus (III.2.1, 34.3). Interestingly, Hildegard usually
avoids such visual terms, preferring instead the auditory ones.
The compositional process of the chapter summaries takes us into a final area of
evidence to dispute Hildegard’s authorship of them: style. The summary process
frequently employs lengthy embedded participial or adjectival phrases that reach a
level of syntactic complexity to which Hildegard rarely ventured, but which seem
matter–of–course for the summary author. 40 Two examples should suffice to
demonstrate. The first describes God’s plan to restore humankind (homo) after the
Fall in I.1.3: “Deus … eum post lapsum ex sola benignitatis karitate per
incarnationem suam reparatum in beatitudine … collocauerit” – “After the fall, God
gathered [humankind], renewed simply by love’s goodness through his Incarnation,
into blessedness” (LDO, p. 3.10–12). The second is drawn from one of the frequent
uses of the preposition de to encapsulate a summary, here for I.2.15: “De imagine in
forma hominis in medio predicte rote apparentis, uertice, pedibus et manibus
distentis circulum fortis, albi et lucidi aeris contingentis” – “On the image in human
form appearing in the middle of the aforesaid wheel, with its crown, feet, and hands
stretched out to touch the circle of strong, bright white air” (LDO, p. 6.40–42). A
particular subset of these participial phrases are the numerous ablative absolutes used
in summarising the complex sequence of events prophetically described in the work’s
final vision, which cycle between periods of verdant holiness and arid corruption, e.g.
“ea Iudeorum et hereticorum parte, qui in malo perstituerint, de proximo Antichristi
aduentu perniciosa presumptione exultante” – “while that portion of the Jews and
heretics who persist in evil will exult with pernicious presumption at the Antichrist’s
impending arrival” (III.5.20, p. 41.88–90); and “iniquitate repressa et iusticia
reualescente … plurimis interim heresibus passim ebullientibus” – “when wickedness
is put down and justice revived … meanwhile heresies will bubble up everywhere”
(III.5.26, p. 42.110–14). 41
40
Hedda Gunneng has quantified statistically significant differences at the textual, syntactic,
lexical, and rhetorical levels between male and female twelfth-century letter writers, using
Hildegard’s letters as her female corpus; among her findings were that Hildegard used
significantly fewer words per macrosyntagm, as well as fewer irregular and embedded
macrosyntagms: “Medieval Letters in Latin,” ch. 3 in Women’s Language: An Analysis of Style
and Expression in Letters Before 1800, ed. Eva Haettner Aurelius, Hedda Gunneng, and Jon
Helgason (Lund, 2012), pp. 63–72.
41
Also in that brief span of capitula: “eandem pacis quietem et fructuum redundantiam
hominibus sibi et non Deo tribuentibus et circa religionem denuo torpere incipientibus” –
“because people attribute this quiet peacetime and fruitful abundance to themselves and not
to God and meet once more with lethargy when it comes to religion” (III.5.21, pp. 41.91–
42.93); “Christiano populo in pentitentiam redacto et multis afflictionibus pro peccatis suis
macerato” – “when the Christian people has been driven to repentance and exhausted by
many afflictions for their sins” (III.5.24, p. 42.100–1); “Romanis imperatoribus a pristina
fortitudine decidentibus” – “as the Roman Emperors fall away from their former strength ”
(III.5.25, p. 42.105–6).
Though Hildegard was no stranger to the ablative absolute, her fundamentally oral
style took no delight in the elaborate rhetorical artifice achieved in such examples.
Indeed, the summaries betray several figures of speech that, though stylistically more
sophisticated, are foreign to Hildegard’s own, less sophisticated style. For example,
the summary occasionally uses interlocking word order in place of Hildegard’s more
straightforward formulations, e.g. “per tres equalium distinctiones mensurarum” –
“through three spans of equal dimension” (LDO, p. 14.65–66), for Hildegard’s
description “loca ista equali mensura ab inuicem discreta sunt” – “these parts are
separated from one another by equal dimension ” (I.4.17, p. 148.6); and “equalis
exteriorum mensura oculorum” – “the equal dimension of the outer eyes” (p. 16.147–
48), in place of her statement “ambo oculi hominis equalem mensuram habent” –
“both human eyes are of equal dimension” (I.4.33, p. 169.2–3). Even more frequent is
inverted word order or formal chiasmus, e.g. “omnes corporis uene” – “all the body’s
veins” (p. 15.105), in place of Hildegard’s expression “omnes uene cunctaque
membra corporis” – “all the veins and all the limbs of the body” (I.4.25, p. 157.2);
“inmensum totius mundi instrumentum” – “the immense instrument of the whole
world” (p. 25.436), in place of her straightforward “magnum instrumentum
firmamenti” – “great instrument of the firmament” (I.4.97, p. 231.28); or “ecclesiam
uario uirtutum cultu decoratam” – “the Church adorned with the varied trim of the
virtues” (p. 37.12–13), for her statement “ecclesia … circumamicta quoque
multiplicibus uirtutibus” – “the Church … is clothed with the manifold virtues”
(III.3.4, p. 384.3–6, in exegesis of Ps. 44.10). Chiasmus reaches a particularly
elaborate height in the summary for I.4.90, for which I have marked the two crossed
adjective–noun pairs in bold:
terra … rotunda sed non plana … inequalem humane conuersationis propter diuersa
uirtutum et uiciorum, que inter animam et carnem geruntur, certamina tenorem
significet (LDO, p. 24.395–99).
The earth, round but not smooth, … signifies the uneven course of human experience,
because of the various battles of virtues and vices that are waged between soul and
flesh.
Such rhetorical techniques were regularly taught in the schools and a common feature
of twelfth–century learned Latin prose, but Hildegard, as both an anchorite and
woman, was never formally schooled in Latin rhetoric and never adopted such figures
into her common compositional patterns. This then is why I have used masculine
pronouns to describe the summarist – the artificial tropes of a learned style indicate a
male author with formal schooling.
Learned vs. Prophetic Style
A significant component of Hildegard’s self–constructed visionary and prophetic
persona was her insistent reminder that she had no such formal schooling.42 In a letter
she wrote near the end of her life to Guibert of Gembloux, famously describing her
visionary experiences, she had this to say about the process of writing them down:
Quod autem non uideo, illud nescio, quia indocta sum. Et ea que scribo, illa in uisione
uideo et audio, nec alia uerba pono quam illa que audio, latinisque uerbis non limatis ea
profero quemadmodum illa in uisione audio, quoniam sicut philosophi scribunt
scribere in uisione hac non doceor.43
But what I do not see, I do not know, for I am unlearned. And what I do write I see and
hear in vision, nor do I set down any other words than what I hear. And I utter these
words in unpolished Latin, just as I hear them in the vision, for I am not taught in this
vision to write as philosophers write.
Similar protestations appear throughout her corpus, including in the Protestificatio
that, rather than a prologue or preface, opens her first work, the Scivias, with a
description of her mind bathed by “maximae coruscationis igneum lumen” – “a fiery
light of exceeding brilliance”:
Et repente intellectum expositionis librorum, uidelicet psalterii, euangelii et aliorum
catholicorum tam ueteris quam noui Testamenti uoluminum sapiebam, non autem
interpretationem uerborum textus eorum nec diuisionem syllabarum nec cognitionem
casuum aut temporum habebam.44
And immediately I knew the meaning of the exposition of Scriptures, namely the
Psalter, the Gospel and the other catholic volumes of both the Old and the New
Testaments, though I did not have the interpretation of the words of their texts or the
division of the syllables or the knowledge of cases and tenses.
She notes further in an autobiographical passage collected into her saintly Vita:
42
See Barbara Newman, “Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation,” Church History 54:2
(1985), 163–75; eadem, Sister of Wisdom, pp. 3–4, 34–41; and Joan Ferrante, “Scribe quae
vides et audis: Hildegard, Her Language, and Her Secretaries,” in The Tongue of the Fathers:
Gender and Ideology in Twelfth-Century Latin, ed. David Townsend and Andrew Taylor
(Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 102–35, at 105–8.
43
Ep. 103R, in Epistolarium II, ed. Lieven Van Acker, CCCM 91A (Turnhout, 1993),
p. 262.88–92.
44
Scivias, ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43, pp. 3–4; trans. Hart and Bishop, p. 59.
In eadem visione scripta prophetarum, evangeliorum et aliorum sanctorum et quo-
rundam philosophorum sine ulla humana doctrina intellexi ac quedam ex illis exposui,
cum vix notitiam litterarum haberem, sicut indocta mulier me docuerat.45
In this vision I understood without human instruction the writings of the prophets, of
the Gospels, and of other saints and of certain philosophers, and I expounded a
number of texts, although I had scarcely any knowledge of literature, since the woman
who taught me was not a scholar.
This was not simply a humility formula, for Hildegard’s Latin really was a bit
roughshod. One of the most consistent corrections made in the Ghent manuscript, for
example, changes Hildegard’s own usage of ita quod followed by the indicative to ita
ut with the subjunctive.46 This was the almost auto–didactic language she acquired in
her teens and twenties under the tutelage of Jutta and perhaps a few of the monks at
the Disibodenberg – enough to sing and pray the liturgy and read Scripture and other
books available in the monastery library, but not much more.
This is not to say, of course, that Hildegard was not deeply learned, nor that she
was incapable of writing both prose and poetry of exceeding brilliance. Rather, it is to
note that her eloquence spoke from a different place than the trained rhetoric and
exacting dialectic of the schoolmen. 47 Though he was writing specifically of her
poetry, Peter Dronke’s assessment is valid for the language of her whole oeuvre: “It is
a highly individual language, at times awkward and at times unclear; the adjectives can
be repetitious and limited in range, the interjections excessive. It is the language not of
a polished twelfth–century humanist but of someone whose unique powers of poetic
vision confronted her more than once with the limits of poetic expression.”48
Her theology, likewise, drew from a different realm of metaphors and images than
prevailed in the au courant debates in Paris. For example, when Odo of Soissons
sought her input on Gilbert of Poitiers’s controversial ideas, Hildegard’s answer
skipped over scholastic semantics and instead “presented her theological vision in
terms of her awareness of divinity as a living force which sustained both creation as a
45
Vita sanctae Hildegardis. Leben der Heiligen Hildegard von Bingen, II.2, ed. Monika Klaes,
Fontes Christiani 29 (Freiburg, 1998), p. 128; trans. Anna Silvas, in Jutta & Hildegard: The
Biographical Sources, Brepols Medieval Women Series (University Park, PA, 1999), p. 160.
Klaes originally edited the Vita in CCCM 126 (Turnhout, 1993), but I have only had access
to the version she published with translation with Herder.
46
See LDO, p. xciv; and Newman, Sister of Wisdom, pp. 22–23. By contrast, Derolez notes that
the capitula are the only parts of the Ghent manuscript to “use the subjunctive correctly”
(LDO, p. lxxxviii).
47
See Ferrante, “Hildegard, Her Language, and Her Secretaries,” p. 107.
48
Peter Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages. New Departures in Poetry, 1000–1150
(Oxford, 1970), pp. 178–79.
whole, and human life in particular.”49 Simultaneously she emphasized her humble
unlearnedness, invoking the image of herself as a little feather blown about by the
breath of God the King:
Penna autem a seipsa non uolat, sed aer eam portat. Sic ego non sum imbuta humana
doctrina nec potentibus uiribus, nec etiam estuo in sanitate corporis, sed in adiutorio
Dei consisto.50
Yet a feather does not fly of its own accord, but the air bears it along. And likewise, I am
not endowed with human education or great powers, nor do I even have good health,
but rely wholly on God’s help.
But for Hildegard, a lack of human education (humana doctrina) was not necessarily a
stumbling block, for a major thrust of her prophetic project was to bring the learned
philosophers and clerics to their comeuppance.51 For all their time in the schools, they
remained cold and barren, and so in the commission for the Scivias, God commanded
Hildegard to cry out to them in instruction:
49
Constant J. Mews, “Hildegard and the Schools,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her
Thought and Art, ed. Charles Burnett and Peter Dronke (London, 1998), pp. 89–110, at 103–
4.
50
Ep. 40R, in Epistolarium I, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91, p. 104.12–15; trans. adapted from
Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman, The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, vol. 1 (Oxford,
1994), p. 111.
51
Volmar also drew the contrast between her visionary authenticity and the vanities of the
schools in his lone surviving letter, addressed to her on behalf of her community of nuns, who
feared her possible death around 1170, in Ep. 195, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM
91A, pp. 443–45; trans. Baird and Ehrman, The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, vol. 2 (Oxford,
1998), pp. 168–69. Though Hildegard did compose an immediate exhortation in answer to
that letter, her extended response was to produce two works of spiritual edification – the
Explanatio Symboli Sancti Athanasii, which serves as a theological précis of her thought in the
LDO; and the Vita S. Ruperti, which provides a hagiographical counterpart to that theology.
The commentary on the Athanasian Creed concludes with a lengthy exhortation to the
teachers of the Church, whom she finds blind and dumb: “Vos, o magistri et doctores populi,
quare ceci ac muti estis in interiori scientia litterarum, quam Deus uobis proposuit,
quemadmodum solem, lunam et stellas instituit, ut racionalis homo per eas tempora
temporum cognoscat et discernat?” – “O masters and teachers of the people, why are you
blind and mute in regards to the inner knowledge of the Scriptures that God has committed
to you, just as he established the sun, the moon, and the stars so that rational humankind
might recognize and discern through them the times and seasons?” (ed. Christopher P. Evans,
in Opera Minora, CCCM 226 [Turnhout, 2007], p. 127.511–14). Among modern
commentators, Alois Dempf championed the contrast between scholastic dullness and her
vivid “symbolist” theology most forcefully in Sacrum Imperium. Geschichts- und
Staatsphilosophie des Mittelalters und der politischen Renaissance (Munich and Berlin, 1929),
pp. 230–31.
quatenus hi erudiantur qui medullam litterarum uidentes eam nec dicere nec
praedicare uolunt, quia tepidi et hebetes ad conseruandam iustitiam Dei sunt, quibus
clausuram mysticorum resera quam ipsi timidi in abscondito agro sine fructu celant.
Ergo in fontem abundantiae ita dilatare et ita in mystica eruditione efflue, ut illi ab
effusione irrigationis tuae concutiantur qui te propter praeuaricationem Euae uolunt
contemptibilem esse.52
until those people are instructed, who, though they see the inmost contents of the
Scriptures [or: who know their letters inside and out], do not wish to tell them or
preach them, because they are lukewarm and sluggish in serving God’s justice. Unlock
for them the enclosure of mysteries that they, timid as they are, conceal in a hidden and
fruitless field. Burst forth into a fountain of abundance and overflow with mystical
knowledge, until they who now think you contemptible because of Eve’s transgression
are stirred up by the flood of your irrigation.
When Guibert took up the post of her secretary in 1177, he earnestly desired to
season her words with the rhetorical eloquence he himself had mastered in his
education.53 Despite his awe at her spiritual gift – so great that he treasured her first
letter back to him almost as a relic – he expressed a concern that her style, with its
rudiments and rough edges, would distract the cultivated reader. The level of editorial
control he requested – even if in the spirit of collaboration – was not one she had ever
granted to her previous secretaries. But worn down by age, chronic illness, and the
demands of administering her abbey (if Guibert’s less–than–flattering portrait in one
letter is to be believed),54 she finally gave in, though only with one text that she
provided specifically for him, the Visio de Sancto Martino (“Vision concerning St.
Martin”), who was Guibert’s personal patron.55 Even then, she took the opportunity
52
Scivias I.1, ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43, p. 8.33–40; trans. adapted from Hart
and Bishop, p. 67.
53
So Guibert records, via Hildegard’s response to him, in Ep. 29.25–27, in Analecta sancte
Hildegardis, vol. 8 of Analecta sacra, ed. J. B. Pitra (Monte Cassino, 1882), pp. 431–33; see
discussion in Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit, p. 182; Newman, Sister of Wisdom,
pp. 23–24; Ferrante, “Hildegard, Her Language, and Her Secretaries,” pp. 128–29; and John
W. Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators
(New York, 2006), pp. 61–65.
54
Ep. 26, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed. Albert Derolez, CCCM 66–66A (Turnhout,
1989), 66A:292; discussed in Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power, pp. 58–59.
55
Both the Visio de Sancto Martino and the “letter” in which Hildegard gives in to Guibert’s
request, the Visio ad Guibertum missa, were so thoroughly worked over in Guibert’s own style
that they are at times hardly recognizable as Hildegard’s – see most recently the work of Mike
Kestemont, Sara Moens, and Jeroen Deploige, “Collaborative Authorship in the Twelfth
Century: A Stylometric Study of Hildegard of Bingen and Guibert of Gembloux,” Digital
Scholarship in the Humanities 30:2 (2015), 199–224.
to remind him that, as with Moses and Jeremiah before her, God could speak and act
quite powerfully through the less–than–articulate:
Nec vero te, seu quempiam mea legentium, iste latini eloquii quem patior defectus,
scandalizet, quod ad ea quae mihi revelantur vel per me manifestari divinitus im-
perantur proferenda, simul etiam mihi facultas aut competens latine proferendi non
datur modus.56
But do not let the defect of Latin eloquence that I suffer scandalize you or any of my
readers, because I am not granted the faculty or competence to utter in Latin what is
revealed to me or what has been divinely commanded to be uttered and made manifest
by me.
This involved exploration of Hildegard’s professed and prophetic linguistic capacities
has been necessary to show that the schooled rhetorical voice of the summarist does
not match her own, because of both her initial lack of formal training as a rhetorical
writer and her continued choice not “to write as philosophers write.” Furthermore,
the consistent and idiosyncratic use of the conjunction uel in the meaning of et
suggests a single author for the summaries; technical aspects betray composition by a
reader at a remove from the work’s first dictation; and departures in expression
suggest an act of reception and interpretation by a reader other than Hildegard.
Possible Authors of the Capitula

But if Hildegard did not write the chapter summaries, then who did? Derolez
remained ambivalent on the question, because, despite such anomalies, the Table of
Contents “supposes a thorough understanding of Hildegard’s text.” 57 Dronke,
meanwhile, ventured as possibilities – without pursuing the question further – first
Volmar, and then Ludwig (abbot of St. Eucharius) or Wezelin (Hildegard’s nephew),
i.e. the three helpers Hildegard mentions in the Epilogue appended to the LDO in the
Riesenkodex.58 To this list for our consideration should be added the sapientes also
mentioned in that Epilogue, among whom we can identify Godfrey of Kahler, a monk
and later abbot of St. Eucharius; and two other men who aided her in her final years:
Godfrey of Disibodenberg, who served briefly as provost at the Rupertsberg after
Volmar’s death, before himself dying in 1176; and Guibert of Gembloux, Hildegard’s
enthusiastic admirer and final secretary and provost.59 To survey this circle of men
56
Ep. 29.27, Analecta sancte Hildegardis, ed. Pitra, p. 433.
57
LDO, pp. xcv–xcvi.
58
LDO, p. lxvi; for the text of the Epilogue, see below, n. 74.
59
On Hildegard’s relationships with her secretaries and other aides, see Herwegen, “Les
collaborateurs de sainte Hildegarde,” pp. 192–203, 302–15, 381–403; Schrader and
Führkötter, Die Echtheit, pp. 142–53, 175–83; and Ferrante, “Hildegard, Her Language, and
Her Secretaries.” Hildegard’s brother, Hugh of Tholey, a canon of Mainz, also assisted as
around the German Sibyl in her last years is to glimpse the intellectual and spiritual
milieu that she fostered. Let us consider each of these possibilities, taking her three
provosts first, followed by the other men who helped in the completion of the LDO.
Volmar, a monk of Disibodenberg, had become Hildegard’s teacher and spiritual
advisor even before she began writing her first work, the Scivias, in 1142. He served
her as special confidant, confessor, secretary, and later provost of her semi–
independent abbey until his death in 1173.60 His tireless aid she memorialized in the
prefaces of all three of her major works, as well as in a moving epitaph in the Epilogue
to the LDO:
Ipse enim in ministerium Dei omnia uerba uisionis huius in magno studio sine
cessatione laboris audiuit et corrigendo disseruit, meque semper monebat ne propter
ullam infirmitatem corporis mei omitterem, quin die et nocte in his que michi in eadem
uisione ostenderentur scribendo laborarem. Sic namque usque in finem suum faciens
in uerbis uisionum istarum numquam saturari potuit (LDO, p. 463.6–12).
For in God’s service he listened to all the words of this vision and arranged them in
correction, all with great devotion and unceasing labor, and he ever admonished me
not to allow any weakness of my body to keep me from the labor of writing day and
night about the things that were shown to me in this vision. Indeed, he did so right up
until his death, for he could never get enough of the words of these visions.
Yet for all Volmar’s aid in composing the LDO, he cannot have been the author of its
summarium, as the latter could only have been composed during or after the editing
stage of the work, which did not commence until after his death.
The devastating personal loss of Volmar was compounded by the fact that
Helenger, the abbot of Disibodenberg, initially refused to provide a replacement
provost for Hildegard’s community, necessitating an appeal from the aged prophetess
to Pope Alexander III.61 The male community in whose anchorhold Hildegard was
enclosed at the age of fourteen had never been happy to see her leave in the 1150s
with the group of women formed around her – together with her prophetic fame and
their lavish dowries – to be established at the Rupertsberg, and the abbots of St.
Disibod fought hard to keep as much control over the feisty visionary as they could.62
interim provost between Godfrey’s death in 1176 and Guibert’s arrival in 1177, but as
Ferrante notes (p. 120), “there is no mention of his helping her with her writings.”
60
Theodoric uses the special term symmista (collaborator or coworker) to describe Volmar in
Vita II.1 (see Silvas, Jutta & Hildegard, pp. 155–56, esp. n. 86).
61
In response, the pope commissioned Wezelin to sort out the mess: Ep. 10 and 10R, in
Epistolarium I, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91, pp. 23–24, trans. Baird and Ehrman, The Letters,
1:45–47.
62
Hildegard depicted the struggle to free her community of women in epic terms, casting
herself in the role of Moses in the autobiographical account gathered into her Vita, II.5 (ed.
Klaes, pp. 134–42; trans. Silvas, Jutta & Hildegard, pp. 163–66). Despite a charter from
Eventually, an elder monk, Godfrey, was dispatched from Disibodenberg to assume
the post of provost sometime in 1174. His time on the Rupertsberg, however, would
be short, as he died in early 1176.63 His lasting achievement in that year and a half was
to begin composing a biography of the saintly magistra he served. As the Vita S.
Hildegardis now stands, the first seven chapters of the first book and many of the
miracle reports in the third book are of his authorship.64 The narrative of the first
book, which in Godfrey’s hand breaks off after the financial settlement between
Disibodenberg and Rupertsberg in 1155, is useful for our purposes because it relies in
part on Hildegard’s own recounting of certain events – and the happy accidents of this
Vita’s complex composition have preserved those autobiographical passages in its
second book. To compare the two, we see Godfrey take far more liberties with
Hildegard’s original accounting than the LDO summarist ever dared. Instead, the
capitula hew far more closely to her style and original phrasing than Godfrey does.
Nor do we find in Godfrey’s prose one of the telltale tics of the capitula, the use of uel
in place of et. For example, he tells us that after Pope Eugene III publicly confirmed
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of 1163 calling her abbatissa, Hildegard’s community

remained subservient to the Disibodenberg throughout her life, reliant upon the latter to staff
its provost, with Hildegard as magistra. Godfrey describes the settlement that was eventually
reached in 1155 in Vita I.7 (ed. Klaes, p. 104; trans. Silvas, pp. 148–49); Hildegard gives her
version of the process in her exhortation to her own community in Ep. 195R, in Epistolarium
II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, pp. 445–47; trans. Baird and Ehrman, The Letters, 2:169–71.
The rocky relationship between the two houses is evident in the correspondence between
them in Ep. 74–78, in Epistolarium I, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91, pp. 160–79; trans. Baird and
Ehrman, The Letters, 1:158–75.
63
Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit, pp. 147–49. As they note, Hildegard alluded to
Godfrey’s death with affection tinged with the fatigue of being left again without a provost in a
letter to Guibert (Ep. 106R, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, pp. 267–68; trans.
Baird and Ehrman, The Letters, 2:41) – but the Brabantine monk, perhaps unwittingly,
suppressed Godfrey’s tenure as provost, casting himself in his epistolary record as Volmar’s
direct successor (so Ep. 19, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed. Derolez, CCCM 66,
pp. 235–38).
64
The composition of Hildegard’s saintly Vita was a complex affair, including Godfrey’s initial
draft, left incomplete at his death; a revision, amounting to a new version, started by Guibert
after Hildegard’s death but left incomplete when he was recalled by his abbot; and the final
palimpsest crafted in the 1180s by Theoderic of Echternach, which revises Godfrey’s draft as
its first book, but then takes up the story thereafter interweaving Hildegard’s autobiographical
accounts with his own commentary. It is one of the most extraordinary pieces of medieval
hagiography: see Barbara Newman, “Three-Part Invention: The Vita S. Hildegardis and
Mystical Hagiography,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of her Thought and Art, ed.
Burnett and Dronke, pp. 189–210; eadem, “Seherin – Prophetin – Mystikerin: Hildegard-
Bilder in der hagiographischen Tradition,” in Hildegard von Bingen. Prophetin durch die Zeiten,
ed. Forster, pp. 126–52; and Silvas, Jutta & Hildegard, pp. 118–29.
Hildegard’s charism at the Synod in Trier in early 1148, he roused everyone “in
laudem conditoris et congratulationem” – “in praise and thanksgiving to the Creator;”
one would expect the summarist to have used uel.65 Moreover, the composition of the
chapter summaries required a greater amount of time and devotion to the LDO than
Godfrey could spare. His tenure as provost was sadly too short, and his major literary
project in that time was the Vita that he did not finish.
Guibert, who made his first brief visit to the Rupertsberg in the autumn of 1175,
received word of Godfrey’s death in February 1176 while visiting the monks at Villers,
whose theological questions for Hildegard would occupy both the prophetess and the
Brabantine monk until her death.66 On his second visit to the Rupertsberg later that
year, Hildegard asked him to succeed Godfrey, though it was not until June 1177 that
Guibert was able to take up the post permanently, after securing the grudging
permission of his abbot at Gembloux.67 He served as her secretary for the final two
years of her life and stayed on at the Rupertsberg for about half a year after her death
on 17 September 1179, working on her saintly Vita at the request of Philip,
Archbishop of Cologne. Godfrey’s initial effort was apparently unknown outside the
monastery, as Guibert was pleasantly surprised to have it at hand when he began
compiling sources from the sisters for his project.68 His own attempted composition,
65
Vita I.4, ed. Klaes, p. 94; trans. Silvas, p. 143.
66
See Guibert’s Ep. 19, in Epistolae, ed. Derolez, CCCM 66, pp. 236–38; since he would have
met Godfrey on his visit in 1175, Guibert had to have intentionally replaced Godfrey’s name
with Volmar’s (p. 238.82) in the final editing of the letters; on the theological questions posed
by the monks of Villers and the answers eventually supplied by Hildegard, see Hildegard of
Bingen, Solutions to Thirty-Eight Questions, trans. Beverly Mayne Kienzle et al., Cistercian
Studies Series 253 (Collegeville, MN, 2014).
67
Guibert tells the story of his relationship to Hildegard in Ep. 26, a letter to Raoul, a monk of
Villers, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed. Derolez, CCCM 66A, pp. 275–81.
68
Ep. 15 to Philip, Archbishop of Cologne, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed. Derolez,
CCCM 66, pp. 214.133–38: “et quod, qui hactenus sedule occultabatur, ex abdito profertur
libellus uite eius, ab illo simplici sermone descriptus, in quo et origo ipsius et gratia, quam ex
utero matris diuinitus perceperat, et nonnulla miracula, que per illam Deus effecerat, edita
continebantur. Et letatus sum in his uehementer” – “A little book of her life, written by him in
a simple style, was produced from hiding – it had, indeed, been carefully kept under cover
until then – in which was contained both her family origin and the grace she had received
from God from her mother’s womb, as well as accounts of some miracles that God had done
through her. And I was overjoyed by these.” Guibert intentionally elides Godfrey’s role as
author of this Vita and as his predecessor as provost, suggesting that Volmar (“primus eius
[sc. Hildegardis] filius” – “her first son”) wrote it; but Godfrey’s authorship of the first draft is
demonstrated in Ep. 41 (CCCM 66A, p. 388), a letter from a different Godfrey, abbot of St.
Eucharius in Trier, providing a copy of Theodoric’s completed Vita S. Hildegardis to Guibert
when the latter, late in life, thought of revisiting his earlier, incomplete project. We will meet
this other Godfrey again shortly.
however, did not even get as far chronologically in Hildegard’s life as Godfrey’s before
he was recalled to Gembloux at Easter 1180; but what he did write is impressive
enough – as Barbara Newman notes, had he completed the work, it would have been
one of the longest hagiographies of the Middle Ages, comparable to Thomas of
Celano’s Vitae of St. Francis of Assisi.69
We have already encountered Guibert’s ambition to gild the Visionary Doctor’s
prose, and how in rebuffing his request she transformed a lack of rhetorical education
into its own prophetic advantage. Her style is definitely not his style.70 Guibert was a
master Latinist who took pride in his elaborate (some might say tortuous) prose.71 On
this fact alone there is little doubt that the chapter summaries of the LDO could not
have issued from his pen. Instead, Derolez’s paleographical studies suggest that
Guibert’s interaction with the Ghent manuscript was as one of its last correctors – in
the capitula quires, his “clumsy hand” can be seen making minor fixes to the
summaries for I.1.14 (immortalitatem for immortalitatis) and I.4.36 (addition of et).72
By the time Guibert reviewed the manuscript, its major editing, as well as the
composition of the capitula, was complete. His attention was devoted, rather, to the
complex construction of the Riesenkodex, whose Liber epistolarum became his
unsigned, edited contribution to Hildegard’s legacy.73
The likeliest candidates for the authorship of the capitula, then, are those whose
help Hildegard herself singled out for praise in the Epilogue appended to the LDO in
the Riesenkodex:74
69
Newman, “Seherin – Prophetin – Mystikerin,” p. 127; when Guibert was editing his letters
near the end of his life in Florennes, he appended his unfinished Vita to his Ep. 38 to Bovo, in
Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed. Derolez, CCCM 66A, pp. 369–79; trans. Silvas, Jutta &
Hildegard, pp. 99–117, with an introduction pp. 89–98; on the circumstances surrounding its
initial composition, see his description in Ep. 42 to Godfrey of St. Eucharius (CCCM 66A,
pp. 394–95).
70
The stark stylistic differences between Hildegard and Guibert have been quantified by
Kestemont et al., “Collaborative Authorship in the Twelfth Century” (see above, n. 55). They
demonstrate (pp. 213–17) that the letters added to Hildegard’s Epistolarium under Guibert’s
secretaryship show distinct differences from those collected before Volmar’s death in 1173,
indicating that Guibert did indeed exert stylistic sway over them as they were edited into the
Riesenkodex collection, though in a “synergistic” blend of their two remarkably divergent
styles.
71
See the collected judgements of Herwegen, Schrader, Cartellieri, Wauters, and Delehaye, as
well as Derolez’s own comments, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, CCCM 66, pp. viii–xi.
72
LDO, pp. xc and xciv; Derolez calls this correcting hand C3.
73
Guibert’s artificial construction of the letter collection is the key insight of Van Acker’s
study, “Der Briefwechsel der heiligen Hildegard von Bingen (Fortsetzung),” esp. pp. 118–34.
74
Herwegen was the first to publish this Epilogue: “Les collaborateurs de sainte Hildegarde,”
pp. 308–9.
Tunc uero reuerentissimus et sapientissimus uir coram Deo et hominibus Ludewicus,
abbas sancti Eucharii in Treueri, magna misericordia super dolore meo motus est, ita
quod per seipsum et per alios sapientes stabili instantia auxilium michi fiducialiter
prebuit, et quia ipse predictum felicem hominem et me ac uisiones meas prius bene
cognouit, in lacrimabili suspirio de illo quasi eum a Deo suscepissem gaudebam.
Quidam etiam homo, qui de nobili genere erat, Wezellinus, prepositus scilicet sancti
Andree in Colonia, qui in magna stabilitate honorificos mores coram Deo et ho-
minibus habuit, et qui in sanctis desideriis bona opera perficere studebat, cum diligenti
studio in amore Spiritus Sancti omnia uerba uisionum istarum audiuit et notauit. Idem
quoque beatus homo in omni dolore et desolatione mea per seipsum et per alios
sapientes me consolando adiuuabat; et omnia uerba uisionum istarum sine tedio
fideliter audiuit et amauit, quoniam illa super mel et fauum ei dulcia erant; sicque per
gratiam Dei cum adiutorio predictorum uenerabilium uirorum scriptura huius libri
completa est (LDO, p. 464.16–33).
But then Abbot Ludwig of St. Eucharius in Trier, a most reverend and wise man in the
sight of both God and men, was moved with great mercy for my pain faithfully to offer
me both his own aid and that of other wise men with unwavering constancy. Because
he was already well acquainted with that blessed man just mentioned [Volmar], as well
as with me and my visions, I was cheered in my weeping sighs for the former to have
received him as from God. Another person, too, of noble stock, Wezelin, the provost of
St. Andreas in Cologne – a man who kept an honourable character with deep stability
in the sight of both God and men, and who was eager to perfect his good work with
holy desires – listened to and noted down all the words of these visions with devoted
care in the love of the Holy Spirit. That blessed man [Ludwig] also helped and
comforted me in my deepest grief and despair not only by himself but also through
other wise men, and he listened to and loved faithfully and tirelessly all the words of
these visions, for they were sweeter to him than honey and the honeycomb. And so, by
God’s grace and with the help of the venerable men just mentioned, the writing of this
book was completed.
The monks of St. Eucharius at Trier had long had a good relationship with
Hildegard.75 They appear to have been an early recipient of a copy of her first work,
Scivias, for which they thanked her.76 As Angela Carlevaris has documented, that was
far from the last of her manuscripts to pass into their hands – books they owned loom
large in the transmission history of most of Hildegard’s oeuvre, including the Ghent
LDO.77 Their abbot Bertolf had hosted Pope Eugenius III for the first Sunday in
75
The monastery was also dedicated to St. Matthias after the “discovery” of the apostle’s
bones during the abbey church’s reconstruction in 1127.
76
Ep. 220, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, pp. 479–80; trans. Baird and
Ehrman, The Letters, 3:10.
77
Angela Carlevaris, Das Werk Hildegards von Bingen im Spiegel des Skriptoriums von Trier St.
Eucharius (Trier, 1999); see also Derolez, “The Manuscript Transmission of Hildegard of
Bingen’s Writings.”
Advent in 1147, at the start of the famous synod during which the pontiff was thought
to have read aloud from a portion of the unfinished Scivias, to great acclaim.78 Bertolf
later sought Hildegard’s advice in 1161 or 1162 concerning the difficult election of his
successor, Gerwin (or Gerwich), who also begged her counsel.79 She even composed
liturgical music for the abbey’s patronal feasts – a responsory and sequence for St.
Eucharius and a sequence for St. Matthias.80
When Ludwig was elected abbot in 1168, he too sought her spiritual counsel – and
the prophetess seems to have found in him a kindred spirit.81 Her first letter to him
(Ep. 214) develops two characteristic images to offer advice. The first describes
Ludwig’s advance in the spiritual life by analogy to a gardener, whose first half–
hearted dalliances soon gave way to the serious cultivation of roses and lilies, symbols
of monastic virginity. With his election as abbot, however, God has called him to the
most rigorous activity of all – the farming of wheat and barley, symbolizing ascetic
discipline.82 After an exhortation to govern with the patience and moderation at the
heart of the Rule of St. Benedict, the second analogy invites him to imitate God’s
creative activity in caring for his brothers: “Sol quoque esto per doctrinam, luna per
differentiam, uentus per strenuum magisterium, aer per mansuetudinem, ignis per
pulchrum doctrine sermonem” – “Be their sun through your teaching, their moon
through your distinction, their wind through your uncompromising governance, their
78
As described by Godfrey in Vita I.4, ed. Klaes, p. 94, trans. Silvas, Jutta & Hildegard, p. 144;
and by Hildegard herself in Vita II.2, ed. Klaes, pp. 128–30, trans. Silvas, Jutta & Hildegard,
p. 160. On the invention of Hildegard’s papal “approval,” see Paul von Winterfeld, “Die vier
Papstbriefe in der Briefsammlung der h. Hildegard,” Neues Archiv 27 (1902), 237–44; John
Van Engen, “Letters and the Public Persona of Hildegard,” in Hildegard von Bingen in ihrem
historischen Umfeld, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (Mainz, 2000), pp. 375–418, at 379–89; and
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “Hildegard of Bingen,” in Medieval Holy Women in the Christian
Tradition, c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden (Turnhout, 2010),
pp. 343–69, at 350–52.
79
Ep. 210–13, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, pp. 468–71; trans. Baird and
Ehrman, The Letters, 2:192–94. On Abbots Bertolf and Gerwich, see Petrus Becker, OSB, Die
Benediktinerabtei St. Eucharius-St. Matthias vor Trier, Germania Sacra, N.F. 34 / Das
Erzbistum Trier 8 (Berlin, 1996), pp. 590–93.
80
“O Euchari columba,” “O Euchari in leta via,” and “Mathias sanctus,” numbers 52, 53, and
50, respectively, in Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia, ed. and trans. Barbara Newman, 2nd
edition (Ithaca, NY, 1998), pp. 206–10, 198–202; Becker notes, however, that Hildegard’s
compositions were never added to the abbey’s liturgical books (Die Benediktinerabtei St.
Eucharius-St. Matthias, pp. 402–3).
81
On Ludwig, see Becker, Die Benediktinerabtei St. Eucharius-St. Matthias, pp. 593–95.
82
Ehrman, The Letters, 2:194–95; for wheat and barley as symbols of the religious life, see LDO
II.1.8, on Apoc. 6.5–6 (pp. 275.29–76.63).
air through your mildness, and their fire through your seemly exposition of
teaching.” 83 Images of cultivated growth in the spiritual life and of microcosmic
humans acting within the macrocosmic world as operarii divinitatis, “divinity’s
workers,” are central themes in the LDO,84 and it is not surprising to find them
suffusing Hildegard’s letters and other writings during the years in which she labored
on the masterpiece. Ludwig is a particularly fitting recipient, as he would soon
become one of her coworkers in bringing God’s work to completion.
The year 1173 would prove a time of trial for them both: Hildegard lost her
beloved friend and secretary, Volmar, probably midyear; and in early autumn, Ludwig
was elected abbot of the venerable imperial monastery of Echternach, a post he would
have to hold simultaneously with the abbacy of St. Eucharius. 85 He was unsure
whether to take on the additional burden and wrote to her for counsel. His letter (Ep.
215), filled with what Joan Ferrante judged “hyperbolic but enchantingly conceived
prose,”86 makes it clear that they had already struck up a deeper friendship, not only
written but in person.87 She replies that, though his job at Echternach will be a difficult
one of bringing a lax house to heel, he has been rightly chosen for it. But she goes
further – this is the letter in which she bids him to aid in the completion of the LDO:
Deo etiam et tibi, mitis pater, gratias ago quod infirmitati et dolori meo, que
paupercula forma sum, condolere dignatus es, que modo uelut orphana sola in opere
Dei laboro, quoniam adiutor meus, ut Deo placuit, mihi ablatus est. Librum quoque
83
Ep. 214, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, p. 472; trans. adapted from Baird
and Ehrman, The Letters, 2:195.
84
The phrase comes from Hildegard’s description of the initial mystical experience that led to
the inception of the LDO, in Vita II.16, ed. Klaes, pp. 172–74; trans. Silvas, Jutta & Hildegard,
p. 179: “Unde et homo opus Dei cum omni creatura est. Sed et homo operarius divinitatis et
obumbratio mysteriorum eius esse atque in omnibus sanctam trinitatem revelare debet, quem
Deus ad imaginem et similitudinem suam fecit” – “Therefore man is the work of God along
with every creature. But man is also said to be the worker of the Divinity and a shadow of his
mysteries, and should in all things reveal the Holy Trinity, for God made him in his image and
likeness.”
85
Herwegen, “Les collaborateurs de sainte Hildegarde,” p. 310; Schrader and Führkötter, Die
Echtheit, pp. 144–45.
86
Ferrante, “Hildegard, Her Language, and Her Secretaries,” p. 115.
87
Ep. 215, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, p. 473; trans. Baird and Ehrman,
The Letters, 2:195: “At tibi scribendum et ad te sepe ueniendum non me uie absterrebit
difficultas, dum sermonum tuorum me inuitet utilitas tanto gratior quanto maiori fuerit studio
comparata” – “And I will not be deterred from writing to you or coming to see you frequently
by the hardship of the road, for the benefit obtained from hearing you is all the more to be
desired the greater the effort it requires to do so.”
per gratiam Spiritus Sancti in uera uisione cum illo scripsi et qui nondum finitus est,
mox tibi ad corrigendum representabo, cum perfectus et scriptus fuerit.88
Gentle father, I give thanks to God and to you, because you deigned to sympathize
with me, a poor little form of a woman, in my infirmity and pain. Now, like an orphan
I toil alone to do God’s work, because my helper has been taken from me, as it pleased
God. The book that I wrote with his help through the grace of the Holy Spirit
according to a true vision is not yet finished. As soon as it is completely written, I will
offer it to you [again?] for correction.
This help he gladly furnished, as Hildegard attests in the LDO’s Epilogue – but what
form exactly did it take? Schrader and Führkötter interpreted a phrase from the
Epilogue (stabili instantia) to mean that he himself made a prolonged stay at the
Rupertsberg between Volmar’s death and Godfrey’s arrival as the new provost, during
which time he attended to the promised correction.89 Dronke, however, points out
that the phrase “can well mean ‘with unfailing constancy’ rather than ‘by making a
long stay,’”90 and it seems unlikely that he could have spared so much time away from
the newly elected post at Echternach, which Hildegard, at least, implies was in
desperate need of reform. Indeed, she rather sympathizes with his tough task, as we
find in another of her letters (Ep. 216), likely from just after his election. In this one,
she draws on her scientific and medical expertise to sketch a brief tetrad of human
personalities – quidam duri, quidam aerii, quidam quasi turbo, quidam ardentes – with
which to diagnose the difficulties he faced: the opposition of those who are hard
(bitterly trusting only in themselves), stormy (foolishly refusing words of wisdom),
and fiery (given wholly over to the secular). Ludwig, however, is of the airy
temperament (“in aeriis moribus”), his mind “in uicissitudine semper est, et tamen
Deum timet et ideo seipsum in peccatis coercet, quia sibimetipsi displicent illa que
operatur” – “always vacillating, and, therefore, he fears God and shows restraint in sin,
because he is displeased with everything he does.”91 This egritudo (“sickness”) of the
air is, in fact, the same that Hildegard diagnoses of herself:92
88
Ep. 215R, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, p. 474; trans. adapted from Baird
and Ehrman, The Letters, 2:196. The term representabo may indicate that, on an earlier visit to
the Rupertsberg, Ludwig had in fact already read portions of the unfinished Ghent
manuscript.
89
Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit, p. 146.
90
Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages. A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua
(†203) to Marguerite Porete (†1310) (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 312–13, n. 93. This stabilis
instantia contrasts with the uicissitudo of Ludwig’s youth that Hildegard mentions in Ep. 214,
and again of his airy disposition in Ep. 216.
91
Ehrman, The Letters, 2:197–98. Because this letter survives only in the Berlin manuscript and
thus without any indication of recipient, Van Acker’s conjecture of Ludwig was only tentative
Ipsa enim cum inspiratione Spiritus Sancti officialis existit et complexionem de aere
habet; ideoque de ipso aere, de pluuia, de uento et de omni tempestate infirmitas ei ita
infixa est, ut nequaquam securitatem carnis in se habere possit: alioquin inspiratio
Spiritus Sancti in ea habitare non ualeret (LDO III.5.38, p. 462.22–26).
For she functions under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and takes her physical
complexion from the air. And so from that air, and from the rain and wind and every
storm, infirmity has been so fixed within her that she can hardly ever find herself free
from the flesh’s anxiety – yet otherwise the Holy Spirit’s inspiration could not dwell
within her.
The comfort and aid that Ludwig himself provided to Hildegard was most of all the
sympathetic connection of kindred souls, struggling together uncertainly under the
weight of the world to fulfill their divinely ordained functions. Nevertheless, he did
likely look over the LDO in its final stages of completion, at Hildegard’s request, made
in the final letter of their correspondence to survive (Ep. 217). As with her first letter
to Ludwig, this one draws on several central themes of the LDO to illuminate the
abbot’s stages of life. The first is an elaborate interweaving of the course of the day,
from dawn to noon to twilight, with the course of human life and the ages of the
world. This is the dynamic interplay of microcosm and macrocosm, summed up for
Ludwig in a refrain frequent from the LDO: “sicut etiam Deus omnem creaturam, que
homo est, creauit, eamque postea spiraculo uite uiuificauit et illuminauit” – “in the
same way God has made the whole of creation – which is man – and then vivified and
lit it with the breath of life.”93 This creative process, unfolding across time and space in
both the cosmos and each individual human life, is for Hildegard rooted in God’s
eternal plan, which has but one goal: the irruption of divinity into time in the
Incarnation. And so she continues in her letter to Ludwig:
Tu autem, o pater, qui secundum Pater nominaris, considera qualiter incepisti et
quomodo uiuendo processisti, quia in pueritia tua stultus eras et in iuuentute tua cum
temetipso letam securitatem habebas. Interim tamen quandam causam unicornis, tibi
nunc ignotam, quesisti, que scilicet scriptura nostra fuit que plurimum resonat de
carnali indumento Filii Dei, qui uirginalem naturam diligendo in ipsa uelut unicornis in
– but a reference to Ludwig’s title as pater (“secundum summum Patrem pater nominaris”)
echoes strongly from Ep. 214, whose addressee is securely identified as Ludwig; and Ep. 217,
discussed below.
92
See further Dronke, Women Writers, pp. 180–83.
93
Ep. 217, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, pp. 476–77; here trans. Dronke,
Women Writers, p. 193. See LDO I.1.2–3 (pp. 49.31–38 and 50.1–4), I.4.14 (p. 145.15–18),
I.4.76 (p. 207.14–16), I.4.100 (p. 243.1–7), III.4.14 (p. 403.3–9), and III.5.4 (pp. 410.21–
411.47).
sinu Virginis quiescens,94 dulcissimo sono pulcherrime fidei omnem Ecclesiam ad se
collegit. Memor esto quoque, o fidelis pater, quid de paupercula mollis forme de
eodem predicto indumento Filii Dei sepe audiebas. Et quia per summum iudicem
adiutor meus ablatus est, ideo scripturam nostram tibi modo committo, suppliciter
rogando quod eam caute serues ac diligenter corrigendo prospicias, ut etiam nomen
tuum in libro uite scribatur.95
But you, father, who are so named after the Father, reflect on how you began, and how
you proceeded in life: for in childhood you were foolish, and in youth you were filled
with joyous assurance. Meanwhile you have embarked on an adventure of the unicorn
– unknown to you in your youth – and this indeed was my writing, which often carries
echoes of the mortal garment of the Son of God, who, loving a virgin nature, resting in
it like a unicorn in the Virgin’s lap, gathered the whole Church to himself with the
sweetest sound of fair faith. Remember too, loyal father, what you often used to hear
from a poor little womanly creature in soft form, about that garment of the Son of God;
and because my helper has been taken away by the highest Judge, I now am entrusting
what I have written to you, asking imploringly that you preserve it carefully and look
over it lovingly for correction, that your name too may be written in the book of life.
Dronke has argued that this was the covering letter under which Hildegard dispatched
the Ghent manuscript to St. Eucharius, in fulfillment of the earlier promise to send the
completed work to the abbot for review. The injunction to keep the manuscript safe
(eam caute serues) likely meant that it was, as yet, the only fair copy, and thus would be
sent back to the Rupertsberg after Ludwig had attended to his corrections of it.96
But when did Hildegard send the work to Abbot Ludwig, and what did he do with
it before returning it to the Rupertsberg? Several scenarios suggest themselves. It is
possible that she never did send him the manuscript, and that the final portion of the
letter – on which hangs its conjecture as a covering letter – was added by Guibert
when he edited it in the Riesenkodex, in order to “fulfill” the promise made in the
previous letter, and perhaps to justify his own work of diligenter corrigendi (carefully
correcting) Hildegard’s writing. Still, it is far more likely that Hildegard did indeed
94
Hildegard’s own writing “in umbra uiuentis lucis” – “in the shadow of the Living Light,”
becomes nearly synonymous with scriptural participation in the Word’s Incarnation, as
described in the speech of Caritas in LDO III.3.2 (pp. 379–82). The image of the unicorn
never appears in the LDO, despite frequent passages describing with sweet tenderness the
entrance of Christ into the Virgin’s womb. Dronke considers it in the context of courtly
cultural references throughout the letter (Women Writers, pp. 194–95); while Angela
Carlevaris believes that it is an allusion to the appearance of the unicorn in the sixth and final
vision of Hildegard’s second major work, the Liber vite meritorum – see Carlevaris’s edition of
that work, CCCM 90 (Turnhout, 1995), p. xiv; and eadem, Das Werk Hildegards von Bingen
im Spiegel des Scriptoriums von Trier St. Eucharius, pp. 11–12.
95
Ep. 217, in Epistolarium II, ed. Van Acker, CCCM 91A, p. 477, trans. adapted from Dronke,
Women Writers, p. 194.
96
Dronke, Women Writers, p. 195.
send the manuscript to the faithful abbot under cover of this letter, but that few if any
corrections to it were actually carried out in Trier. Before the completed manuscript
could have been dispatched to St. Eucharius, the text not yet transcribed at Volmar’s
death had to be finished. The scribe who attended to that work (Hand 1) also carried
out the larger–scale corrections that followed, executed under Hildegard’s direct
supervision.97 All of that work must have lasted at least into 1174. Meanwhile, Ludwig
was likely away from the autumn of 1174 into 1175, in company of Arnold, the
Archbishop of Trier, in the imperial retinue in Italy.98 If the manuscript had been sent
to him in 1174, he would not have had much time to review it before having to send it
back. If, on the other hand, Hildegard had sent it to him after his return in 1175 –
some two years after Volmar’s death – it seems odd that she would mention the loss of
her helper (adiutor) in the cover letter, especially as by that point Godfrey of
Disibodenberg had been installed as provost. Indeed, Hildegard likelier sent the
bundled quires of the LDO to Ludwig in the wake of Godfrey’s death in early 1176, in
the hands of one of the learned (sapiens) monks of St. Eucharius whom the abbot had
sent to help her with the work.
Could Ludwig, then, have composed the chapter summaries after receiving the
manuscript? Not likely. By 1176, the chapter summaries had probably already been
written, as it would not be too much longer before the Rupertsberg scriptorium would
begin making copies of Hildegard’s magnum opus. The “careful correction” that
Hildegard bid from her friend was at most a final proof, before the scribes set to work.
Those scribes, meanwhile, might very well have been shared between Ludwig’s abbey
and hers, working in the segregated double scriptorium on the Rupertsberg, in the
men’s side once used by Volmar. 99 This might indeed explain why G’s second
correcting scribe, who was responsible for the main grammatical and stylistic
polishing that Hildegard authorized, wrote in “a more advanced early Gothic” script
less familiar to the main production hands of Hildegard’s abbey – he was a monk of
Trier.100
Ludwig’s material support for the project in the years after Volmar’s death was thus
not in his own person, but rather the sapientes whom he sent to help. Of these men,
who must certainly have been monks of St. Eucharius, one alone can we identify:
97
LDO, pp. xcii-xciii. Derolez surmised that the principal scribe of the manuscript (Hand 2)
may have been Volmar himself; or that, at minimum, Hand 2’s work ended with Volmar’s
death.
98
Becker, Die Benediktinerabtei St. Eucharius-St. Matthias, p. 593.
99
Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit, pp. 27, 178.
100
On Corrector 2, see LDO, pp. xc and xciv.
Godfrey of Kahler, 101 who would be elected abbot of Echternach when Ludwig
stepped down from the second posting in 1181, and go on to succeed him as well in
the abbacy of St. Eucharius after Ludwig’s death in 1188. Both Ludwig and Godfrey
took a keen interest in Hildegard’s cult after her death, together urging Theodoric of
Echternach to take up the writing of her Vita in the 1180s.102 Years later, when Guibert
sought Godfrey’s aid in completing his own Vita of the saint, he recalled fondly the
first time they met – it was at the Rupertsberg, probably during either or both of
Guibert’s first or second visits to the abbey, in 1175 and 1176, respectively.103 Could
Godfrey of St. Eucharius have composed the chapter summaries during this period?
We do find in Godfrey’s letter to Guibert at least one stylistic similarity to the
summarist: the frequent use of the connective particle quod. Moreover, the summary
quires travelled separately from the Ghent manuscript for some time even after it
arrived in the library of St. Eucharius, perhaps because Godfrey had kept hold of them
while serving as Ludwig’s vicar at St. Eucharius until replacing him at Echternach.104
Without more evidence, however, he must remain the less likely of two potential
candidates. It is to the other that we turn our attention at last.
101
On Godfrey, see Becker, Die Benediktinerabtei St. Eucharius-St. Matthias, pp. 595–98.
Herwegen was the first to identify Godfrey as one of these sapientes (“Les collaborateurs de
sainte Hildegarde,” p. 312). He also suggested Theodoric of Echternach, and Schrader and
Führkötter followed his conclusion (Die Echtheit, pp. 11–12, 181). However, Klaes has shown
that he is unlikely to have been at the Rupertsberg in the 1170s and that his work on
Hildegard’s Vita after 1181 was not personally motivated, but simply at the behest of his
former and current abbots, Ludwig and Godfrey (see Silvas’s summary of the arguments in
Jutta & Hildegard, pp. 120–21). The Rupertsberg’s close bibliographic relationship was
always with St. Eucharius, not Echternach.
102
See Vita, Prologue, ed. Klaes, p. 81, which dedicates the work to the two men; and
Godfrey’s own account in a letter to Guibert, Ep. 41, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed.
Derolez, CCCM 66A, p. 388.
103
See Ep. 42, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed. Derolez, CCCM 66A, p. 392 (quoted at
the end of this essay). Herwegen assumed that Godfrey’s presence at the Rupertsberg was
later, during Guibert’s full-time work at the Rupertsberg from 1177–1179; however, his
reasoning for Ludwig’s dispatch of Godfrey of St. Eucharius to the visionary’s side seems to
apply a fortiori to the time after Godfrey of Disibodenberg’s death in early 1176: “Ce fut
évidemment d’après la volonté de son abbé Louis. Ne peut-on pas supposer que ce-luici
envoya son chapelain auprès d’Hildegarde, quand elle avait le plus besoin de secours?” See
“Les collaborateurs de sainte Hildegarde,” p. 312.
104
Godfrey is recorded as the vicar of St. Eucharius from 1179 until becoming abbot of
Echternach in 1181: Becker, Die Benediktinerabtei St. Eucharius-St. Matthias, p. 596.
Wezelin, not only a kinsman of the visionary but also a member of her inner circle
in the years after Volmar’s death,105 served as provost of St. Andreas in Cologne from
1169–1181, and died about 1185; he succeeded his older brother, Arnold, in that
post, when the latter became the Archbishop of Trier (1169–1183).106 Despite his
duties downriver, he must have spent a considerable amount of time at the
Rupertsberg to have played the significant role Hildegard describes for him in the
completion of the LDO (p. 464.26–28): “cum diligenti studio in amore Spiritus Sancti
omnia uerba uisionum istarum audiuit et notauit” – “he listened to and noted down all
the words of these visions with devoted care in the love of the Holy Spirit.” This
cannot mean, as Dronke assumes,107 that Wezelin transcribed a complete fair copy of
the text – or if he did, it is neither the Ghent manuscript nor either of the two
surviving twelfth–century copies made from G, the Riesenkodex and the Troyes
manuscript. Derolez, meanwhile, hesitates to identify him as the Ghent manuscript’s
second main scribe, preferring to think of Wezelin more generally as directing the
final stages of the work.108 If what Wezelin was noting down (notauit) as he reviewed
every single word of the work was not a full transcription, could it have been
summaries? Unfortunately, we do not have any writings under his name by which to
compare for style. Still, Hildegard’s own description of his role makes him the likeliest
author of the LDO’s chapter summaries.
Conclusion: The Function of the Capitula in Hildegard’s Legacy

The Rupertsberg in the 1170s was a busy place. At the beginning of her final decade,
Hildegard undertook a fourth and final preaching tour south into Swabia, where she
rained down fiery denunciations of clerical turpitude upon lax congregations. Her
correspondence, which records some of those sermons, continued at a feverish pace.
She would also work on–and–off answering tough theological questions put to her by
the monks of Villers, with Guibert of Gembloux as their middle–man – and her pleas
for patience on account of her infirmities remind us that she was weighed down by age
and illness. Her scriptorium, meanwhile, continued to crank out copies of her works,
105
So Guibert’s description of him in Ep. 26, in Epistolae, p. 293: “Reuerende memorie
domnus Wescelinus, nepos eius et familiarissimus ei” – “Sir Wezelin, of dear memory, her
kinsman and closest confidant.” The term nepos (lit. “nephew”) must have been used loosely,
as Wezelin and Arnold were of a noble family of Vaucourt, in the Lorraine valley, and our
extant records do not establish any direct connection between them and the nobility of
Bermersheim and Sponheim (Hildegard’s direct family). Unsurprisingly, the network of
noble families was both more diffuse than blood and sometimes more tightly knit.
106
Schrader and Führkötter, Die Echtheit, pp. 177–78.
107
LDO, p. lxxxiv.
108
LDO, p. xcii.
including a deluxe illuminated edition of the Scivias.109 Her abbey had grown so large
that a daughter house was established across the river, and the affairs of both houses
became even more burdensome with the loss of Volmar and continued battles with
her old home of Disibodenberg to replace him. In the last year of her life, the fierce
visionary would find her community under interdict for having meddled too much in
local politics. And of course, there was the completion of the LDO.
In all this, we can glimpse how Hildegard worked to secure her visionary and
prophetic legacy. As John Van Engen has shown, the construction of her “public
persona” was very much a conscious effort, not only on her part but on that of her
collaborators, to make her holy voice heard more clearly in the life of late twelfth–
century Christendom.110 One often unnoted aspect of this was an effort to make her
dense visionary texts more accessible. It is in this sense that we should consider the
composition of capitula, not only for the LDO but also for her earlier works, Scivias
and Liber vite meritorum.111 In fact, the Rupertsberg Scivias gives us an advanced layout
for that accessibility: each of its twenty-six visions begins with its capitula, followed by
a primary illustration likely designed under Hildegard’s guidance; and only then the
vision text and its explication, with each capitulum repeated in rubrics before its
respective chapter.112 The design of the LDO’s Lucca codex in the early thirteenth
century likely took its cue from this expanded visual and capitulated superstructure.113
The chapter summaries, like the Rupertsberg Scivias images, serve as framing
devices, to prime and orient the audience for the challenging text they are about to
read. As I have shown elsewhere, discrepancies between the text of the Scivias and its
illustrations may be part of Hildegard’s re–visionary process to refine and clarify that
orientation. 114 This often involved a slight regularization of iconography, to use
109
The so-called Rupertsberg Codex: Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, HS 1; saec.
XII3-4, Rupertsberg; lost since 1945, though preserved in black-and-white photographs and a
hand-painted parchment facsimile from the 1920s housed at the Abtei St. Hildegard,
Eibingen.
110
Van Engen, “Letters and the Public Persona of Hildegard,” pp. 375–418.
111
See José C. Santos Paz, “Modo de percepción y modo de representación: las tabulae del
Scivias,” in Fabula in tabula. Una storia degli indici dal manoscritto al testo elettronico, ed.
Claudio Leonardi, Marcello Morelli, and Francesco Santi; Quaderni di cultura mediolatina 13
(Spoleto, 1995), pp. 79–97.
112
Scivias, ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, CCCM 43, p. xxv.
113
As Derolez notes, “We may consequently assume that the placing of the Capitula before
the text of each corresponding Pars was the normal practice” of the Rupertsberg scriptorium
(“The Manuscript Transmission of Hildegard’s Writings,” p. 20).
114
Nathaniel M. Campbell, “Imago expandit splendorem suum: Hildegard of Bingen’s Visio-
Theological Designs in the Rupertsberg Scivias Manuscript,” Eikón / Imago 4 (2013, Vol. 2,
No. 2), pp. 1–68, esp. 33–34.
existing visual codes to reintegrate Hildegard’s unique visual language into the wider
tradition. In the LDO, we find a similar reintegration in the treatment of the different
exegetical modes in the Genesis commentary of Part Two. In the main text, Hildegard
never specifies the modes, marking the transition from one to the next with the simple
phrase, “item (or et iterum) alio modo” – “again, in another sense.” The capitula,
however, do systematically indicate for every section whether it is literal, allegorical, or
moral. 115 Other discrepancies between the summarist’s voice and Hildegard’s, as
noted above – e.g. racio for racionalitas, or effectus for operatio – likewise reveal that the
capitula seek to introduce Hildegard’s text from a more general, perhaps even
scholastic, point of view.
The fact that the capitula are meant to be introductory rather than comprehensive
also explains the nature of the summaries for the elaborate allegorical
correspondences between cosmos, body, and soul in LDO I.4. The majority of
Hildegard’s text in that vision is devoted to the tropological perspective of the soul;
yet for the most part, the complex moral psychology is glossed quite simply by the
summarist, who devotes the majority of his time to describing the physical
correspondences between macrocosmic universe and microcosmic body. 116 The
schematic complexity of that long fourth vision lies in those physical
correspondences, even if its theological and pastoral heart belongs in the soul.
Though differences between the LDO’s main text and the capitula are sufficient to
show that Hildegard did not author them, this does not mean that she did not
115
E.g. for the exegesis of the second day (Genesis 1.6–8) in LDO II.1.24–27, the capitula
note (p. 30.114–25): “Quomodo hec … ad litteram intelligenda sint” – “How these are to be
understand according to the letter” (II.1.24), “Quod secundum allegoriam” – “What
according to the allegory” (II.1.25), and “Quod secundum moralem sensum” – “What
according to the moral sense” (II.1.27). Similar labels were later added in the margins of the
main text. Derolez suggests that as a result, “the theological viewpoint in the Capitula looks
more conventional than the one reflected in Hildegard’s text” (LDO, p. xcv).
116
E.g. the summary for I.4.31 (p. 16.135–41): “Quia frons inter cerebrum et oculos
consistens ita infirmitates que de cerebro et stomacho nascuntur colligit, quemadmodum luna
ea que de superioribus descendunt et de inferioribus ascendunt recipit, et quod oculi
albugine, pupillis et humore suo purum etherem, stellas et uaporem de subiacentibus aquis
ascendentem insinuent, et multiplex horum in qualitatibus animi consideratio” – “For the
forehead is established between the brain and eyes such that it gathers the infirmities that
arise from the brain and stomach, just as the moon receives what descends from the upper
elements and ascends from the lower ones; the eyes declare with their whiteness, pupils, and
moisture the pure ether, the stars, and the vapor that rises up from the waters below; and the
manifold consideration of these things in the qualities of the soul.” In Hildegard’s text for that
chapter (pp. 166–67), the physical description relating head and eyes to the firmament
consists of the first 13 lines, while the moral explication (glossed by the summarist in just
seven words) is more than three times as long (lines 13–57).
authorize them. Rather, she seems to have trusted the men gathered in her service
faithfully to create a schematic to make the text more accessible. Despite her reticence
in the face of Guibert’s repeated requests to polish her writing, she recognized that her
learned team of assistants had important skills to offer in constructing the edifice of
her legacy. Hildegard – or the Living Light, as she would have insisted – was certainly
its chief architect, but she was not its sole crafter. Studies of her collaborators and
their contributions to her legacy have revealed how careful and extensive its
construction was. Godfrey of St. Disibodenberg began her hagiography, while Guibert
of Gembloux succeeded Volmar in sculpting her correspondence into its own artful
record, to project Hildegard’s holy reputation across the ecclesiastical and secular
landscape. Meanwhile, Ludwig and Godfrey of St. Eucharius and Wezelin all
contributed to the finishing work of the LDO, with one of the latter two composing its
capitula. As Guibert and Godfrey of St. Eucharius would later reminisce about this
period of teamwork:
in illa Dei sancta domo, inter sacras uirgines sponsas Christi, ambulantes in consensu
pie societatis et multe dulcedinis, dulces eque spiritualium uerborum et uisionum
sancte matris Hildegardis simul capiebamus cibos.117
Together we walked in that holy house of God among the sacred virgins, the brides of
Christ, and in the harmony of pious fellowship and great delight we received equally
the sweet food of holy Mother Hildegard’s words and visions.
Nourished by that banquet, they served its hostess faithfully and well as operarii
divinitatis – “divinity’s workers.”118
ABSTRACT
As with the first two works in her visionary trilogy, St. Hildegard of Bingen’s masterpiece, the
Liber diuinorum operum (written 1165–1173/74), includes as a “Table of Contents”
summaries for each of its 316 chapters, originally composed separately from the main text but
later distributed throughout, either before each of its three parts or, in one recension, before
each chapter. It has been generally, if silently, assumed that Hildegard herself composed these
summaries. However, a detailed study of the Capitula reveals significant divergences from the
Visionary Doctor in terms of vocabulary and expression, interpretation, and style. Further
technical aspects of the compositional process indicate that she was likely not their author.
The second half of this study considers who among the circle of men who helped her in her
final years might have been responsible for writing these summaries. After examining the roles
of the three provosts of her abbey –Volmar of Disibodenberg, Godfrey of Disibodenberg, and
Guibert of Gembloux – I turn to the adiutores whom Hildegard specifically mentioned in the
“Epilogue” to the Liber diuinorum operum: Ludwig, abbot of St. Eucharius and Matthias in
117
Ep. 42, in Guiberti Gemblacensis Epistolae, ed. Derolez, CCCM 66A, p. 392.
118
See above, n. 84.
Trier; Godfrey of Kahler, a monk of St. Eucharius among the sapientes whom Ludwig sent to
Hildegard’s aid; and Wezelin, her nephew and provost of St. Andreas in Cologne. The final
two men – Godfrey of St. Eucharius and Wezelin – prove to be the only two probable
candidates. In composing these Capitula, their author helped Hildegard to make her
challenging visionary text more accessible by schematizing the work and orienting the reader.
RÉSUMÉ
(trans. E.J. Richards, with corrections).
Le Liber diuinorum operum (rédigé entre 1165 et 1173/74), suivant un modèle identique aux
deux œuvres précédentes, présente une « table de matières » avec un résumé de chacun des
316 chapitres. Cette table des matières aurait été composée séparément de la partie principale
mais aurait été incluse par la suite dans le texte qui nous est parvenu et placée soit au début de
chaque partie distincte de l’œuvre ou au début de chaque chapitre, selon la tradition textuelle.
En général on a présupposé, de façon tacite, qu’Hildegarde elle–même serait à l’origine de ces
résumés. Une analyse détaillée de ces Capitula révèle, par contre, d’importantes divergences
lexicales, rhétoriques, herméneutiques et stylistiques entre la langue de la visionnaire et celle
des résumés. Grâce à une interprétation technique ou empirique de ces résumés il est évident
qu’Hildegarde n’en est pas l’auteur. La deuxième partie de l’étude examine le rôle potentiel
des trois prévôts de son abbaye, les trois adiutores mentionnés par Hildegarde elle–même
dans l’épilogue de ses œuvres, c’est–à–dire, Volmar de Disibodenberg, Godefroi de
Disibodenberg, et Guibert de Gembloux, y compris aussi Louis, l’abbé de Saint–Eucher et
Matthias de Trèves, ainsi que Godefroi de Kahler, moine parmi les sapientes de cette abbaye,
envoyé à Hildegarde par Louis pour lui venir en aide, et Wescelin, son neveu et prévôt de
Saint André de Cologne. En conclusion, Godefroi et Wescelin semblent être les candidats les
plus plausibles pour être les auteurs des résumés. En composant ces Capitula, leur auteur aide
Hildegard à rendre son texte visionnaire et provocateur plus accessible grâce à un schéma de
l’oeuvre qui oriente ses lecteurs.
Nathaniel M. Campbell
Union College, Barbourville, KY
ncampbell@unionky.edu

Chapter Summaries To The Liber Divinorum Operum

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Chapter Summaries To The Liber Divinorum Operum

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The Authorship and Function of the Chapter Summaries

to Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber diuinorum operum

The capitulum (chapter heading or summary) is an often–overlooked part of many

Possible Authors of the Capitula

Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of 1163 calling her abbatissa, Hildegard’s community

Conclusion: The Function of the Capitula in Hildegard’s Legacy

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